Phenomenology and Feminism: Early Writings

Phenomenology has become an important ally for feminism by claiming to overcome the mind-body dualism that has long been at the center of the history of philosophy. In the history of philosophy, which identifies men with the mind and women with the body and positions the latter as inferior, the elimination of such a dichotomy opens up a new field of possibility for feminism. In this article, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, the first text written in terms of feminism and phenomenology, and Iris Marion Young’s “Throwing Like a Girl: The Phenomenology of the Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality” will be investigated in terms of the philosophical roots on which they are grounded. For this purpose, the first section deals with the mind-body dualism in the history of philosophy and the historical transformation of phenomenology. In the second part, Simone de Beavoir’s The Second Sex and in the third part, Iris Marion Young’s essay’s philosophical thoughts and their consequences are analyzed. In the last part, Beauvoir’s and Young’s feminist phenomenologies are analyzed and it is found that Beauvoir’s Hegelian conclusion, inheriting the tense relationship between Sartre’s and Merleau- Ponty’s ideas, limits her in terms of phenomenology, while Young’s feminist phenomenology, based on Merleau-Ponty, is far from such a limitation.