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Feminist philosophy
Major works A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) The Subjection of Women (1869) The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) The Second Sex (1949) The Feminine Mystique (1963) Sexual Politics (1969) The Dialectic of Sex (1970) Speculum of the Other Woman (1974) This Sex Which is Not One (1977) Gyn/Ecology (1978) Throwing Like a Girl (1980) In a Different Voice (1982) The Politics of Reality (1983) Women, Race, and Class (1983) Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984) The Creation of Patriarchy (1986) Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989) Gender Trouble (1990) Sexual Personae (1990) Black Feminist Thought (1990) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993) Whipping Girl (2007) The Promise of Happiness (2010)
Major thinkers Bartky Baier de Beauvoir Bebel Boggs Butler Cixous Cleyre De la Cruz Collins Daly Davis Démar Dworkin Federici Firestone Fourier Friedan Frye Gamond Goldman Grosz Haslanger hooks Irigaray Jaggar Kristeva Lerner Lorde Lugones Luxemburg MacKinnon Mama Michel Mill Taylor Mill Millett Nussbaum Paglia Pankhurst Pateman Plumwood Rubin Saadawi Showalter Solanas Spivak Voilquin Wittig Wollstonecraft Young Zetkin
Ideas Feminism analytical epistemology ethics existentialism metaphysics science Gender equality Gender performativity Social construction of gender Care ethics Intersectionality Standpoint theory
Journals Feminist Philosophy Quarterly Hypatia philoSOPHIA Radical Philosophy Signs
Category Feminist philosophy

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Intersectional variants Fat Lesbian Lesbian of color Radical lesbianism Separatist Sex-positive Transfeminism Postgenderism Vegetarian ecofeminism Socialist Anarchist Queer Jineology Marxist Critical theory Standpoint Materialist Ecofeminist Postcolonial Global Transnational Xenofeminism Multicultural Africana womanism Black Hip hop Lesbian Ratchet Chicana Lesbian Indigenous Native American Multiracial Romani Womanism
Other variants Anti-abortion Equity Femonationalism Maternal Postfeminism Reactionary State Carceral Imperial Embedded Gender-critical or trans-exclusionary Victim White
Religious variants Atheist Buddhist Christian Mormon New Womanist Asian Neopagan Dianic Wicca Reclaiming Ecofeminist Hindu Islamic Jewish Orthodox Sikh
Movements and ideologies 4B movement Analytical Anti-fascist Anti-pornography Cyberfeminism HCI Networked Difference Cultural Neo Ecofeminism Eugenic Individualist Lipstick Stiletto Liberal Equality Social Labor Libertarian Post-structural Postmodern Radical Political lesbianism Separatist Technofeminism Women's liberation
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Outlooks Bicycling and feminism Criticism of marriage Views on BDSM Views on pornography Views on prostitution Views on sexual orientation Views on sexuality Views on transgender topics SCUM Manifesto
Theory Feminist method Gender studies Gender mainstreaming Gynocentrism Kyriarchy Male gaze Matriarchy Women's studies Men's studies Patriarchy Écriture féminine Areas of study Anthropology Archaeology Architecture Art Art criticism Literary criticism Film theory Science fiction Biology Composition studies Criminology Pathways perspective Economics FDPA Geography International relations Constructivism Legal theory Pedagogy Philosophy Aesthetics Empiricism Epistemology Ethics Justice ethics Existentialism Metaphysics science Political ecology Political theory Pornography Psychology Therapy Revisionist mythology Sex wars Sexology Sociology Technoscience Theology womanist theology
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Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women.^[1][2] Existentialism is a philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the individual and the experiences of the individual, that moral thinking and scientific thinking together are not sufficient for understanding all of human existence, and, therefore, that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to understand human existence.^[3][4][5] (Authenticity, in the context of existentialism, is to recognize the responsibility we have for our existence.^[6]) This philosophy analyzes relationships between the individual and things, or other human beings, and how they limit or condition choice.^[7]

Existentialist feminists emphasize concepts such as freedom, interpersonal relationships, and the experience of living as a human body.^[8] They value the capacity for radical change, but recognize that factors such as self-deception and the anxiety caused by the possibility of change can limit it. Many are dedicated to exposing and undermining socially imposed gender roles and cultural constructs limiting women's self-determination, and criticize post-structuralist feminists who deny the intrinsic freedom of individual women.^[9] A woman who makes considered choices regarding her way of life and suffers the anxiety associated with that freedom, isolation, or nonconformity, yet remains free, demonstrates the tenets of existentialism.^[10] The novels of Kate Chopin, Doris Lessing, Joan Didion, Margaret Atwood, and Margaret Drabble include such existential heroines.

Simone de Beauvoir was a renowned existentialist and one of the principal founders of second-wave feminism.^[8] Beauvoir examined women's subordinate role as the 'Other', patriarchally forced into immanence^[11] in her book, The Second Sex, which some claim to be the culmination of her existential ethics.^[12] The book includes the famous line, "One is not born but becomes a woman," introducing what has come to be called the sex-gender distinction. Beauvoir's The Second Sex provided the vocabulary for analyzing the social constructions of femininity and the structure for critiquing those constructions, which was used as a liberating tool by attending to the ways in which patriarchal structures used sexual difference to deprive women of the intrinsic freedom of their "can do" bodies.^[13] Some say Beauvoir is farther reaching than Sartre^[14] despite often being overlooked in many comprehensive works about existentialist feminism.^[12]

Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, existentialist and phenomenologist who contributed greatly to existential feminism through works like Existential Psychoanalysis.^[15] In this work, Sartre claims that the individual is the intersection of universal schemata and he rejects the idea of a pure individual.^[15]

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was another French philosopher who contributed many existential works to the field. Many following theorists, such as Judith Butler, critiqued his methods, including his sexual ideology.^[8] Other theorists omit him, viewing him as a "Sartre knock-off".^[12]

Some critiques of the field are of Beauvoir and her portrayal of existentialist feminism specifically. Gwendolyn Dolske critiques that Beauvoir is inconsistent between her works, noting that the women in Beauvoir's fictional works resign to cultural norms rather than conquering their Otherness.^[16] Margaret Simons critiques Beauvoir's inability to transfer her work in theory into praxis.^[11]

However, most of the critiques are of the limitations of the field overall. Margery Collins and Christine Pierce fault Sartre's limited anti-essentialism for his sexist views^[8] which Hazel Barnes then refutes.^[8] Maryellen MacGuigan criticizes Ortega's view of women's inferiority, Julia Maria's sexuate condition, and Frederick Buyendijk's narrative of women's experience.^[8]

Jo-Ann Pilardi outlines the female eroticism in Beauvoir's work^[8] and Julien Murphy compares the gaze or look in Sartre to Adrienne Rich.^[8] Nancy Potter aligns female incest survivors' experiences with dread and anxiety.^[8] Janice McLane uses Merleau-Ponty's Concept of flesh to describe self-mutilation.^[8] Shannon Sullivan criticizes Merleau-Ponty's anonymous body.^[8] Linda Bell moves Sartre's notion of authenticity from feminist existentialism to feminist ethics.^[8] T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting uses Fanon's analyses of racist and colonized subjectivities to discuss feminism.^[8]

Joseph Mahon. Existentialism, Feminism and Simone De Beauvoir. Palgrave Macmillan. 1997.