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Journal Title: Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory.

Volume: Issue: Month/Year: 1990 Pages: 141-159

Article Title: "Throwing Like a Girl" Article Author: Iris Marion Young

Call #: HQ1206 .Y68 1990 Location: ISSN:

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Throwing Like a Girl A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality

In discussing the fundamental significance of lateral space, which is one of the uniquespatial dimensions generated by the human upright posture, Erwin Straus pauses at "the remarkable difference in the manner of throw- ing of the two sexes"! (p. 157). Citing a study and photographs of young boys and girls, he describes the difference as follows:

The girl of five does not make any usc of lateral space. She does not stretch her arm sideward; she does not twist her trunk; she does not move her legs, which remain side by side. All she does in preparation for throwing is to lift her right arm forward to the horizontal and to bend the forearm backward in a pronate position .... The ball is released without force, speed, or accurate aim .... A boy of the same age, when preparing to throw, 'stretches his right arm sideward and backward; sr-oinates the forearm; twists, turns and bends his trunk; and moves his right foot backward. From this stance, he can support his throwing almost with the full strength of his total motorium. . The ball leaves the hand with considerable acceleration; it moves toward its goal in a long flat curve. (p. '57-60)'

Though he does not slop to trouble himself with the problem for long, Straus makes a few remarks in the attempt to explain this "remarkable difference." Since the difference is observed at such an early age, he says, it seems to be "the manifestation of a biological, not an acquired, differ- ence" {p. '57). He is somewhat at a loss, however, to specify the source of the difference. Since the feminine style of throwing is observed in young children, it cannot result from the development of the breast. Straus pro- vides further evidence against the breast by pointing out that "it seems certain" that the Amazons, who cut off their right breasts, "threw a ball just like our Betty's, Mary's and Susan's" (p. 158). Having thus dismissed the breast, Straus considers the weaker muscle power of the girl as an explanation of the difference, but concludes that the girl should be expected to compensate for such relative weakness with the added preparation of reaching around and back. Straus explains the difference in style of throw- ing by referring to a "feminine attitude" in relation to the world and to

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space. The difference for him is biologically based, but he denies that it is specifically anatomical. Girls throw in a way different from boys because girls are "feminine."

What is even more amazing than this "explanation" is the fact that a perspective that takes body comportment and movement as definitive for the structure and meaning of human lived experience devotes no more than an incidental page to such a "remarkable difference" between mas- culine and feminine body comportment and style of movement, for throw- ing is by no means the only activity in which such a difference can be observed. If there are indeed typically "feminine" styles of body com- portment and movement, this should generate for the existential phe- nomenologist a concern to specify such a differentiation of the modalities of the lived body. Yet Straus is by no means alone in his failure to describe the modalities, meaning, and implications of the difference between "mas- culine" and "feminine" body comportment and movement.

A virtue of Straus's account of the typical difference of the sexes in throwing is that he does not explain this difference on the basis of physical attributes. Straus is convinced, however, that the early age at which the difference appears shows that it is not an acquired difference, and thus he is forced back onto a mysterious "feminine essence" in order to explain it. The feminist denial that the real differences in behavior and psychology between men and woman can be attributed to some natural and eternal feminine essence is perhaps most thoroughly and systematically expressed by Beauvoir. Every human existence is defined by its situation; the particular existence of the female person is no less defined by the historical, cultural, social, and economic limits of her situation. We reduce women's condition simply to unintelligibility if we "explain" it by 'appeal to some natural and ahistorical feminine essence. In denying such a feminine essence, however, .we should not fall into that "nominalism" that denies the real differences in the behavior and experiences of men and women. Even though there is no eternal feminine essence, there is "a common basis which underlies every individual female existence in the present state of education and custom. "3 The situation of women within a given sociohistorical set of circumstances, despite the individual variation in each woman's experi- ence, opportunities, and possibilities, has a unity that can be described and made intelligible. It should be emphasized, however, that this unity is specific to a particular social formation during a particular epoch.

Beauvoir proceeds to give such an account of the situation of women with remarkable depth, clarity, and ingenuity. Yet she also, to a large ex- tent. fails to give a place to the status and orientation of the woman's body as relating to its surroundings in living action. When Beauvoir does talk about the woman's bodily being and her physical relation to her surround- ings, she tends to focus on the more evident facts of a woman's physiology. She discusses how women experience the body as a burden, how the hormonal and physiological changes the body undergoes at puberty, during

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menstruation and pregnancy, are felt to be fearful and mysterious, and claims that these phenomena weigh down the woman's existence by tying her to nature, immanence, and the requirements of the species at the ex- pense of her own individuality." By largely ignoring the situatedness of the woman's actual bodily movement and orientation to its surroundings and its world, Beauvoir tends to create the impression that it is woman's anatomy and physiology as such that at least in part determine her unfree status.f This essay seeks to begin to fiJIa gap that thus exists both in existential

phenomenology and feminist theory. It traces in a provisional way some of the basic modalities of feminine body comportment, manner of moving, and relation in space. It brings intelligibility and significance to certain observable and rather ordinary ways in which women in our society typi- cally comport themselves and move differently from the ways that men do. In accordance with the existentialist concern with the situated ness of human experience, I make no claim to the universality of this typicality of the bodily comportment of women and the phenomenological description based on it. The account developed here claims only to describe the mo- dalities of feminine bodily existence for women situated in contemporary advanced industrial, urban, and commercial society. Elements of the ac- count developed here mayor may not apply to the situation of woman in other societies and other epochs, but it is not the concern of this essay to determine to which, if any, other social circumstances this account applies. The scope of bodily existence and movement with which I am concerned

here is also limited. I concentrate primarily on those sorts of bodily activities that relate to the comportment or orientation of the body as a whole, that entail gross movement, or that require the enlistment of strength and the confrontation of the body's capacities and possibilities with the resistance and malleability of things. The kind of movement I am primarily concerned with is movement in which the body aims to accomplish of a definite purpose or task. There are thus many aspects of feminine bodily existence that I leave out of this account. Most notable of these is the body in its sexual being. Another aspect of bodily existence, among others, that I leave unconsidered is structured body movement that does not have a particular aim-for example, dancing. Besides reasons of space, this limitation of subject is based on the conviction, derived primarily from Merleau-Ponty, that it is the ordinary purposive orientation of the body as a whole toward things and its environment that initially defines the relation of a subject to its world. Thus a focus upon ways in which the feminine body frequently or typically conducts itself in such comportment or movement may be particularly revelatory of the structures of feminine existence" Before entering the analysis, [ should clarify what I mean here by "fem-

inine" existence. In accordance with Beauvoir's understanding, I take "femininity" to designate not a mysterious quality or essence that all women have by virtue of their being biologically female. It is, rather, a set

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of structures and conditions that delimit the typical situation of being a woman in a particular society, as well as the typical way in which this situation is lived by the women themselves. Defined as such, it is not necessary that allY women be "feminine"-that is, it is not necessary that there be distinctive structures and behavior typical of the situation of women." This understanding of "feminine" existence makes it possible to say that some women escape or transcend the typical situation and defi- nition of women in various degrees and respects. I mention this primarily to indicate that the account offered here of the modalities of feminine bodily existence is not to be falsified by referring to some individual women to whom aspects of the account do not apply, or even to some individual men to whom they do.

The account developed here combines the insights of the theory of the lived body as expressed by Merleau-Ponty and the theory of the situation of women as developed by Beauvoir. I assume that at the most basic de- scriptive level, Merleau-Ponty's account of the relation of the lived body to its world, as developed in the Phenomenology of Perception, applies to any human existence in a general way. At a more specific level, however, there is a particular style of bodily comportment that is typical of feminine ex- istence, and this style consists of particular modalities of the structures and conditions of the body's existence in the world.f

As a framework for developing these modalities, I rely on Beauvoir's account of woman's existence in patriarchal society as defined by a basic tension between immanence and transcendence." The culture and society in which the female person dwells defines woman as Other, as the ines- sential correlate to man, as mere object and immanence. Woman is thereby both culturally and socially denied by the subjectivity, autonomy, and crea- tivity that are definitive of being human and that in patriarchal society are accorded the man. At the same time, however, because she is a human existence, the female person necessarily is a subjectivity and transcen- dence, and she knows herself to be. The female person who enacts the existence of women in patriarchal society must therefore live a contradic- tion: as human she is a free subject who participates in transcendence, but her situation as a woman denies her that subjectivity and transcendence. My suggestion is that the modalities of feminine bodily comportment, mo- tility, and spatiality exhibit this same tension between transcendence and immanence, between subjectivity and being a mere object.

Section I offers some specific observations about bodily comportment, physical engagement with things, ways of using the body in performing tasks, and bodily self-image, which I find typical of feminine existence. Section II gives a general phenomenological account of the modalities of feminine bodily comportment and motility. Section III develops these mo- dalities further in terms of the spatiality generated by them. Finally, in Section IV, I draw out some of the implications of this account for an understanding of the oppression of women, as well as raise some further

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questions about feminine being in the world that require further investi- gation.

The basic difference that Straus observes between the way boys and girls throw is that girls do not bring their whole bodies into the motion as much as the boys do. They do not reach back, twist, move backward, step, and lean forward. Rather, the girls tend to remain relatively immobile except for their arms, and even the arms are not extended as far as they could be. Throwing is not the only movement in which there is a typical difference in the way men and women use their bodies. Reflection on feminine com- portment and body movement in other physical activities reveals that these also are frequently characterized, much as in the throwing case, by a failure to make full use of the body's spatial and lateral potentialities.

Even in the most simple body orientations of men and women as they sit, stand, and walk, one can observe a typical difference in body style and extension. Women generally are not as open with their bodies as are men in their gait and stride. Typically, the masculine stride is longer proportional to a man's body than is the feminine stride to a woman's. The man typically swings his arms in a more open and loose fashion than does a woman and typically has more up and down rhythm in his step. Though we now wear pants more than we used to and consequently do not have to restrict our sitting postures because of dress, women still tend to sit with their legs relatively close together and their arms across their bodies. When simply standing or leaning, men tend to keep their feet farther apart than do women, and we also tend more to keep our hands and arms touching or shielding our bodies. A final indicative difference is the way each carries books or parcels; girls and women most often carry books embraced to their chests, while boys and men swing them along their sides. , The approach that people of each sex take to the performance of physical tasks that require force, strength, and muscular coordination is frequently different. There are indeed real physical differences between men and women in the kind and limit of their physical strength. Many of the ob- served differences between men and women in the performance of tasks requiring coordinated strength, however, are due not so much to brute muscular strength as to the way each sex uses the body in approaching tasks. Women often do not perceive themselves as capable of lifting and carrying heavy things, pushing and shoving with significant force, pulling, squeezing, grasping, or twisting with force. When we attempt such tasks, we frequently fail to summon the full possibilities of our muscular coor- dination, position, poise, and bearing. Women tend not to put their whole bodies into engagement in a physical task with the same ease and natu- ralness as men. For example, in attempting to lift something, women more often than men fail to plant themselves firmly and make their thighs bear

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the greatest proportion of the weight. Instead, we tend to concentrate Our effort on those parts of the body most immediately connected to the task- the arms and shoulders-rarely bringing the power of the legs to the task at all. When turning or twisting something, to take another example, we frequently concentrate effort in the hand and wrist, not bringing to the task the power of the shoulder, which is necessary for its efficient perfor- mance.l?

The previously cited throwing example can be extended to a great deal of athletic activity. Now, most men are by no means superior athletes, and their sporting efforts more often display bravado than genuine skill and coordination. The relatively untrained man nevertheless engages in sport generally with more free motion and open reach than does his female counterpart. Not only is there a typical style of throwing like a girl, but there is a more or less typical style of running like a girl, climbing like a girl, swinging like a girl, hitting like a girl. They have in common first that the whole body is not put into fluid and directed motion, but rather, in swinging and hitting, for example, the motion is concentrated in one body part; and second that the woman's motion tends not to reach, extend, lean, stretch, and follow through in the direction of her intention.

For many women as they move in sport, a space surrounds us in imag- ination that we are not free to move beyond; the space available to our movement is a constricted space. Thus, for example, in softball or volleyball women tend to remain in one place more often than men do, neither jump- ing to reach nor running to approach the ball. Men more often move out toward a ball in flight and confront it with their own countermotion. Women tend to wait for and then react to its approach, rather than going forth to meet it. We frequently respond to the motion of a ball coming toward us as though it were coming at us, and our immediate bodily im- pulse is to flee, duck, or otherwise protect ourselves from its flight. Less often than men, moreover, do women give self-conscious direction and placement to their motion in sport. Rather than aiming at a certain place where we wish to hit a ball, for example, we tend to hit it in a "general" direction.

Women often approach a physical engagement with things with timid- ity, uncertainty, and hesitancy. Typically, we lack an entire trust in our bodies to carry us to our aims. There is, I suggest, a double hesitation here. On the one hand, we often lack confidence that we have the capacity to do what must be done. Many times I have slowed a hiking party in which the men bounded across a harmless stream while I stood on the other side warily testing my footing on various stones, holding on to overhanging branches. Though the others crossed with ease, I do not believe it is easy for me, even though once I take a committed step I am across in a flash. The other side of this tentativeness is, I suggest, a fear of getting hurt, which is greater in women than in men. OUf attention is often divided between the aim to be realized in motion and the body that must accomplish it, while at the same time saving itself from harm. We often experience our

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bodies as a fragile encumbrance, rather than the media for the enactment of our aims. We feel as though we must have our attention directed upon our bodies to make sure they are doing what we wish them to do, rather than paying attention to what we want to do through our bodies.

All the above factors operate to produce in many women a greater or lesser feeling of incapacity, frustration, and self-consciousness. We have more of a tendency than men do to greatly underestimate our bodily ca- pacity.!' We decide beforehand-usually mistakenly-that the task is be- yond us, and thus give it less than our full effort. At such a halfhearted level, of course, we cannot perform the tasks, become frustrated, and fulfill our own prophecy. In entering a task we frequently are self-conscious about appearing awkward and at the same time do not wish to appear too strong. Both worries contribute to our awkwardness and frustration. If we should finally release ourselves from this spiral and really give a physical task our best effort, we are greatly surprised indeed at what our bodies can accom- plish. It has been found that women more often than men underestimate the level of achievement they have reached.V

None of the observations that have been made thus far about the way women typically move and comport their bodies applies to all women all of the time. Nor do those women who manifest some aspect of this typi- cality do so in the same degree. There is no inherent, mysterious connection between these sorts of typical comportments and being a female person. Many of them result, as will be developed later, from lack of practice in using the body and performing tasks. Even given these qualifications, one can nevertheless sensibly speak of a general feminine style of body com- portment and movement. The next section will develop a specific categori- cal description of the modalities of the comportment and movement.

II The three modalities of feminine motility are that feminine movement ex- hibits an ambiguous transcendence, an inhibited intentionality, and a discontin- uous unity with its surroundings. A source of these contradictory modalities is the bodily self-reference of feminine comportment, which derives from the woman's experience of her body as a thing at the same time that she experiences it as a capacity.

1. In his Phenomenology of Perception.t? Merleau-Ponty takes as his task the articulation of the primordial structures. of existence, which are prior to and the ground of all reflective relation to the world. In asking how there can be a world for a subject, Merleau-Ponty reorients the entire tra- dition of that questioning by locating subjectivity not in mind or con- sciousness, but in the body. Merleau-Ponty gives to the lived body the ,/ ontological status that Sartre, as well as "intellectualist" thinkers before him, attribute to consciousness alone: the status of transcendence as being for itself. It is the body in its orientation toward and action upon and within ,:\/ its surroundings that constitutes the initial meaning-giving act (p. 121, pp.

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146-47). The body is the first locus of intentionality, as pure presence to the world and openness upon its possibilities. The most primordial inten-

t tiona I act is the motion of the body orienting itself with respect to and moving within its surroundings. There is a world for a subject just insofar as the body has capacities by which it can approach, grasp, and appropriate its surroundings in the direction of its intentions.

While feminine bodily existence is a transcendence and openness to the world, it is an ambiguous transcendence, a transcendence that is at the same time laden with immanence. NQ~,.once weJilke tb• locus...cl ..sub~'y_ and transcendence to be the lived Dudy rather than pure consci.,02'sness, alI.!':~!1scende~.is ambiguous because the body as natural an~enaI- is i!!!'!'anence. But it is not the ever-present possIbIlIty of any Iived boayu t,,-be passive, to be touched as well as touching, to be grasped as well as grasping, which I am referring to here as the ambiguity of the transcen- dence of the feminine lived body. The transcendence of the lived body that Merleau-Ponty describes is a transcendence that moves out from the body in its immanence in an open and unbroken directedness upon the world in action. The lived body as transcendence is pure fluid action, the con- tinuous calling-forth of capacities that are applied to the world. Rather than simply beginning in immanence, feminine bodily existence remains in im- manence Of, better, is overlaid with immanence, even as it moves out toward the world in motions of grasping, manipulating, and so on.

In the previous section, I observed that a woman typically refrains from throwing her whole body into a motion, and rather concentrates motion in one part of the body alone, while the rest of the body remains relatively immobile. Only part of the body, that is, moves out toward a task, while the rest remains rooted in immanence. I also observed earlier that a woman

l frequently does not trust the capacity of her body to engage itself in physicalrelation to things. Consequently, she often lives her body as a burden,._ which must be dragged and prodded along and at the same time protected. 2. Merleau-Ponty locates intentionality in motility (pp. 110-12); the

possibilities that are opened up in the world depend on the mode and limits of the bodily "I can" (p. 137, p. 148). Feminine existence, however, often does not enter bodily relation to possibilities by its own comportment toward its surroundings in an unambiguous and confident "I can." For example, as noted earlier, women frequently tend to posit a task that would be accomplished relatively easily once attempted as beyond their capacities before they begin it. Typically, the feminine body underuses itsreal ca- pacity, both as the potentiality of its physical size and strength and as the real skills and coordination that are available to it. Feminine bodily existence is an inhibited intentionality, which simultaneously reaches toward a pro- jected end with an "I can" and withholds its full bodily commitment to that end in a self-imposed "I cannot."!"

An uninhibited intentionality projects the aim to be accomplished and connects the body's motion toward that end in an unbroken directedness

Throwing Like a Girl I ]49

that organizes and unifies the body's activity. The body's capacity and motion structure its surroundings and project meaningful possibilities of movement and action, which in turn call the body's motion forth to enact them: "To understand is to experience the harmony between what we aim at and what is given, between the intention and the performance ... " (p. 144; see also pp. 101, 1}1, and 1}2). Feminine motion often severs this mutually conditioning relation between aim and enactment. In those mo- tions that when properly performed require the coordination and direct- edness of the whole body upon some definite end, women frequently move in a contradictory way. Their bodies project an aim to be enacted but at the same time stiffen against the performance of the task. In performing a physical task the woman's body does carry her toward the intended aim, often not easily and directly, but rather circuitously, with the wasted motion resulting from the effort of testing and reorientation, which is a frequent consequence of feminine hesitancy.

For any lived body, the world appears as the system of possibilities that are correlative to its intentions (p. 1}1). For any lived body, moreover, the world also appears to be populated with opacities and resistances correla- tive to its own limits and frustrations. For any bodily existence, that is, an "I cannot" may appear to set limits to the "I can." To the extent that feminine bodily existence is an inhibited intentionality, however, the same set of possibilities that appears to be correlative to its intentions also appears to be a system of frustrations correlative to its hesitancies. By repressing or withholding its own motile energy, feminine bodily existence frequently projects an "I can" and an "I cannot" with respect to the very same end. When the woman enters a task with inhibited intentionality, she projects the possibilities of that task-thus projects an "I call" -but projects them merely as the possibilities of "someone," and not truly her possibilities- and thus projects an "1 cannot."

}. Merleau-Ponty gives to the body the unifying and synthesizing func- tion that Kant locates in transcendental subjectivity. By projecting an aim toward which it moves, the body brings unity to and unites itself with its surroundings; through the vectors of its projected possibilities it sets things in relation to one another and to itself. The body's movement and orien- tation organizes the surrounding space as a continous extension of its own being (p. 14}). Within the same act in which the body synthesizes its sur- roundings, moreover, it synthesizes itself. The body synthesis is immediate and primordial. "I do not bring together one by one the parts of my body; this translation and this unification are performed once and for all within me: they are my body itself" (p. 150).

The third modality of feminine bodily existence is that it stands in dis- continuous ullity with both itself and its surroundings. I remarked earlier that in many motions that require the active engagement and coordination of the body as a whole in order to be performed properly, women tend to locate their motion in part of the body only, leaving the rest of the body

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relatively immobile. Motion such as this is discontinuous with itself. The part of the body that is transcending toward an aim is in relative disunity from those that remain immobile. The undirected and wasted motion that is often an aspect of feminine engagement in a task also manifests this lack of body unity. The character of the inhibited intentionality whereby fem- inine motion severs the connection between aim and enactment between possibility in the world and capacity in the body, itself produces this dis- continuous unity.

According to Merleau-Ponty, for the body to exist as a transcendent presence to the world and the immediate enactment of intentions, it cannot exist as an object (p. 123). As subject, the body is referred not onto itself, but onto the world's possibilities. "In order that we may be able to move our body towards an object, the object must first exist for it, our body must not belong to the realm of the 'in-itself" (p. 139).The three contradictory modalities of feminine bodily existence-ambiguous transcendence, inhib- ited intentionality, and discontinuous unity-have their root, however, in the fact that for feminine existence the body frequently is both subject and object for itself at the same time and in reference to the same act. Feminine bodily existence is frequently not a pure presence to the world because it is referred onto itself as well as onto possibilities in the world.P

Several of the observations of the previous section illustrate this self- reference. It was observed, for example, that women have a tendency to take up the motion of an object coming toward them as coming at them. I also observed that women tend to have a latent and sometimes conscious fear of getting hurt, which we bring to a motion. That is, feminine bodily existence is self-referred in that the woman takes herself to be the object of the motion rather than its originator. Feminine bodily existence is also self- referred to the extent that a woman is uncertain of her body's capacities and does not feel that its motions are entirely under her control. She must divide her attention between the task to be performed and the body that must be coaxed and manipulated into performing it. Finally, feminine bod- ily existence is self-referred to the extent that the feminine subject posits her motion as the motion that is looked at. In Section IV, we will explore the implications of the basic fact of the woman's social existence as the object of the gaze of another, which is a major source of her bodily self- reference. .

In summary, the modalities of feminine bodily existence have their root in the fact that feminine existence experiences the body as a mere thing- a fragile thing, which must be picked up a\Ucoaxed into movement, a thing that exists as looked at and acted upon. To e sure, any lived body exists as a material thing as well as a transcending s ject. For feminine bodily existence, however, the body is often lived as a thing that is other than it, a thing like other things in the world. To the extent that a woman lives her body as a thing, she remains rooted in immanence, is inhibited, and retains a distance from her body as transcending movement and from engagement in the world's possibilities.

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III

For Merleau-Ponty there is a distinction between lived space, or phe- nomenal space, and objective space, the uniform space of geometry and science in which all positions are external to one another and interchange- able. Phenomenal space arises out of motility, and lived relations of space are generated by the capacities of the body's motion and the intentional relations that that motion constitutes. "It is clearly in action that the spa- tiality of our body is brought into being and an analysis of one's own movement should enable us to arrive at a better understanding" (p. 102, d. pp. '48, '49, 249)·In this account, if there are particular modalities of feminine bodily comportment and motility, it must follow that there are also particular modalities of feminine spatiality. Feminine existence lives space as enclosed or confining, as having a dual structure, and the woman experiences herself as positioned in space.

1. There is a famous study that Erik Erikson performed several years ago in which he asked several male and female preadolescents to construct a scene for an imagined movie ou t of some toys. He found that girls typi- cally depicted indoor settings, with high walls and enclosures, while boys typically constructed outdoor scenes. He concluded that females tend to emphasize what he calls "inner space," or enclosed space, while males tend to emphasize what he calls "outer space," or a spatial orientation that is open and outwardly directed. Erikson's interpretation of these obser- vations is psychoanalytical: girls depict "inner space" as the projection of the enclosed space of their wombs and vaginas; boys depict "outer space" as a projection of the phallus.l" I find such an explanation wholly uncon- vincing. If girls do tend to project an enclosed space and boys to project an open and outwardly directed space, it is far more plausible to regard this as a reflection of the way members of each sex live and move their bodies in space.

In the first section, I observed that women tend not to open their bodies in their everyday movements, but tend to sit, stand, and walk with their limbs close to or closed around them. I also observed that women tend not to reach, stretch, bend, lean, or stride to the full limits of their physical capacities, even when doing so would better accomplish a task or motion. The space, that is, that is physically available to the feminine body is fre- quently of greater radius than the space that she uses and inhabits. Fem- inine existence appears to posit an existential enclosure between herself and the space surrounding her, in such a way that the space that belongs to her and is available to her grasp and manipulation is constricted and the space beyond is not available to her movement. 17 A further illustration of this confinement of feminine lived space is the observation already noted that in sport, for example, women tend not to move out and meet the motion of a ball, but rather tend to stay in one place and react to the ball's motion only when it has arrived within the space where she is. The timidity,

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immobility, and uncertainty that frequently characterize feminine move- ment project a limited space for the feminine "I can."

2. In Merleau-Ponty's account, the body unity of transcending perfor- mance creates an immediate link between the body and the outlying space. "Each instant of the movement embraces its whole space, and particularly the first which, by being active and initiative, institutes the link between a here and a yonder. ." (p. 140). In feminine existence, however, the projection of an enclosed space severs the continuity between a "here" and a "yonder." In feminine existence there is a double spatiality, as the space of the "here" is distinct from the space of the "yonder." A distinction between space that is "yonder" and not linked with my own body possi- bilities and the enclosed space that is "here .." which I inhabit with my bodily possibilities, is an expression of the discontinuity between aim and capacity to realize the aim that I have articulated as the meaning of the tentativeness and uncertainty characterizing the inhibited intentionality of feminine motility. The space of the "yonder" is a space in which feminine existence projects possibilities in the sense of understanding that "some- one" could move within it, but not I. Thus the space of the "yonder" exists for feminine existence, but only as that which she is looking into, rather than moving in.

3. The third modality of feminine spatiality is that feminine existence experiences itself as positioned ill space. For Merleau-Ponty, the body is the original subject that constitutes space; there would be no space without the body (pp. 102, 142). As the origin and subject of spatial relations, the body does not occupy a position coequal and interchangeable with the positions occupied by other things (p. ]43, pp. 247-49). Because the body as lived is not an object, it cannot be said to exist in space as water is in the glass (pp. ]39-40). "The word 'here' applied to my body does not refer to a determinate position in relation to other positions or to external coor- dinates, but the laying down of the first coordinates, the anchoring of the active body in an object, the situation of the body in the face of its tasks" (p. 100).

Feminine spatiality is contradictory insofar as feminine bodily existence is both spatially constituted and a constituting spatial subject. Insofar as feminine existence lives the body as transcendence and intentionality, the feminine body actively constitutes space and is the original coordinate that unifies the spatial field and projects spatial relations and positions in accord with its intentions. But to the extent that feminine motility is laden with immanence and inhibited, the body's space is lived as constituted. To the extent, that is, that feminine bodily existence is self-referred and thus lives itself as an object, the feminine body does exist in space. In Section I, I observed that women frequently react to motions, even our own motions, as though we are the object of a motion that issues from an alien intention, rather than taking ourselves as the subject of motion. In its immanence and inhibition, feminine spatial existence is positioned by a system of co- ordinates that does not have its origin in her own intentional capacities.

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The tendency for the feminine body to remain partly immobile in the per- formance of a task that requires the movement of the whole body illustrates this characteristic of feminine bodily existence as rooted in place. Likewise does the tendency of women to wait for an object to come within their immediate bodily field, rather than move out toward it.

Merleau-Ponty devotes a great deal of attention to arguing that the diverse senses and activities of the lived body are synthetically related in such a way that each stands in a mutually conditioning relation with all the others. In particular, visual perception and motility stand in a relation of reversability; an impairment in the functioning of one, for example, leads to an impairment in the functioning of the other (pp. 133-37). If we assume that reversability of visual perception and motility, the previous account of the modalities of feminine motility and the spatiality that arises from them suggests that visual space will have its own modalities as well.

Numerous psychological studies have reported differences between the sexes in the character of spatial perception. One of the most frequently discussed of these conclusions is that females are more often "field-de- pendent." That is, it has been claimed that males have a greater capacity for lifting a figure out of its spatial surroundings and viewing relations in space as fluid and interchangeable, whereas females have a greater ten- dency to regard figures as embedded within and fixed by their surround- ings.!" The above account of feminine motility and spatiality gives some theoretical intelligibility to these findings. If feminine body spatiality is such that the woman experiences herself as rooted and enclosed, on the reversability assumption it would follow that visual space for feminine existence also has its closures of immobility and fixity. The objects in visual space do not stand in a fluid system of potentially alterable and inter- changeable relations correlative to the body's various intentions and proj- ected capacities. Rather, they too have their own places and are anchored in their immanence.

IV The modalities of feminine bodily comportment, motility, and spatiality that I have described here are, I claim, common to the existence of women in contemporary society to one degree or another. They have their source, however, in neither anatomy nor physiology, and certainly not in a mys- terious feminine essence. Rather, they have their source in the particular situation of women as conditioned by their sexist oppression in contem- porary society.

Women in sexist society are physically handicapped. Insofar as we learn to live out our existence in accordance with the definition that patriarchal culture assigns to us, we are physically inhibited, confined, positioned, and objectified. As lived bodies we are not open and unambiguous tran- scendences that move out to master a world that belongs to us, a world constituted by our own intentions and projections. To be sure, there are

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actual women in contemporary society to whom all or part of the above description does not apply. Where these modalities are not manifest in or determinative of the existence of a particular woman, however, they are definitive in a negative mode-as that which she has escaped, through accident or good fortune, or, more often, as that which she has had to overcome.

One of the sources of the modalities of feminine bodily existence is too obvious to dwell upon at length. For the most part, girls and women are not given the opportunity to use their full bodily capacities in free and open engagement with the world, nor are they encouraged as much as boys are to develop specific bodily skills.!" Girls' play is often more sed- entary and enclosing than the play of boys. In school and after-school activities girls are not encouraged to engage in sport, in the controlled use of their bodies in achieving well-defined goals. Girls, moreover, get little practice at "tinkering" with things and thus at developing spatial skill. Finally, girls are not often asked to perform tasks demanding physical effort and strength, while as the boys grow older they are asked to do so more and more.?"

The modalities of feminine bodily existence are not merely privative, however, and thus their source is not merely in lack of practice, though this is certainly an important element. There is a specific positive style of feminine body comportment and movement, which is learned as the girl comes to understand that she is a girl. The young girl acquires many subtle habits of feminine body comportment-walking like a girl, tilting her head like a girl, standing and sitting like a girl, gesturing like a girl, and so on. The girl learns actively to hamper her movements. She is told that she must be careful not to get hurt, not to get dirty, not to tear her clothes, that the things she desires to do are dangerous for her. Thus she develops a bodily timidity that increases with age. In assuming herself to be a girl, she takes herself to be fragile. Studies have found that young children of both sexes categorically assert that girls are more likely to get hurt than boys are,21 and that girls ought to remain close to home, while boys can roam and explore.P The more a girl assumes her status as feminine, the more she takes herself to be fragile and immobile and the more she actively enacts her own body inhibition. When I was about thirteen, I spent hours prac- ticing a "feminine" walk, which was stiff and closed, and rotated from side to side.

Studies that record observations of sex differences in spatial perception, spatial problem-solving, and motor skills have also found that these dif- ferences tend to increase with age. While very young children show vir- tually no differences in motor skills, movement, spatial perception, etc., differences seem to appear in elementary school and increase with ado- lescence. If these findings are accurate, they would seem to support the conclusion that it is in the process of growing up as a girl that the modalities of feminine bodily comportment, motility, and spatiality make their ap- pearance.P

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There is, however, a further source of the modalities of feminine bodily existence that is perhaps even more profound than these. At the root of those modalities, I have stated in the previous section, is the fact that the woman lives her body as object as well as subject. The source of this is that patriarchal society defines woman as object, as a mere body, and that in sexist society women are in fact frequently regarded by others as objects and mere bodies. An essential part of the situation of being a woman is that of living the ever-present possibility that one will be gazed upon as a mere body, as shape and flesh that presents itself as the potential object of another subject's intentions and manipulations, rather than as a living manifestation of action and intention. 24 The source of this objectified bodily existence is in the attitude of others regarding her, but the woman herself often actively takes up her body as a mere thing. She gazes at it in the mirror, worries about how it looks to others, prunes it, shapes it, molds and decorates it.

This objectified bodily existence accounts for the self-consciousness of the feminine relation to her body and resulting distance she takes from her body. As human, she is a transcendence and subjectivity, and cannot live herself as mere bodily object. Thus, to the degree that she does live herself as mere body, she cannot be in unity with herself, but must take a distance from and exist in discontinuity with her body. The objectifying regard that "keeps her in her place" can also account for the spatial modality of being positioned and for why women frequently tend not to move openly, keep- ing their limbs closed around themselves. To open her body in free, active, open extension and bold outward-directedness is for a woman to invite objectification.

The threat of being seen is, however, not the only threat of objectifi- cation that the woman lives. She also lives the threat of invasion of her body space. The most extreme form of such spatial and bodily invasion is the threat of rape. But we daily are subject to the possibility of bodily invasion in many far more subtle ways as well. It is acceptable, for example, for women to be touched in ways and under circumstances that it is not acceptable for men to be touched, and by persons-i.e., men-whom it is not acceptable for them to touch.j" I would suggest that the enclosed space that has been described as a modality of feminine spatiality is in part a defense against such invasion. Women tend to project an existential bar- rier closed around them and discontinuous with the "over there" in order to keep the other at a distance. The woman lives her space as confined and closed around her, at least in part as projecting some small area in which she can exist as a free subject.

This essay is a prolegomenon to the study of aspects of women's ex- perience and situation that have not received the treatment they warrant. I would like to close with some questions that require further thought and research. This essay has concentrated its attention upon the sorts of physi- cal tasks and body orientation that involve the whole body in gross move- ment. Further investigation into woman's bodily existence would require

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looking at activities that do not involve the whole body and finer movement. If we are going to develop an account of the woman's body experience in situation, moreover, we must reflect on the modalities of a woman's ex- perience of her body in its sexual being, as well as upon less task-oriented body activities, such as dancing. Another question that arises is whether the description given here would apply equally well to any sort of physical task. Might the kind of task, and specifically whether it is a task or move- ment that is sex-typed, have some effect on the modalities of feminine bodily existence? A further question is to what degree we can develop a theoretical account of the connection between the modalities of the bodily existence of women and other aspects of our existence and experience. For example, I have an intuition that the general lack of confidence that we frequently have about our cognitive or leadership abilities is traceable in part to an original doubt of our body's capacity. None of these questions can be dealt with properly, however, without first performing the kind of guided observation and data collection that my reading has concluded, to a large degree, is yet to be performed.

NOTES This essay was first presented at a meeting of the Mid-West Division of the Society

for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) in October 1977. Versions of the essay were sub- sequently presented at a session sponsored by SWIP at the Western Division meet- ings of the American Philosophical Association, April 1978; and at the third annual Merleau-Ponty Circle meeting, Duquesne University, September 1978. Many people in -discussions at those meetings contributed gratifying and helpful responses. ram particularly grateful to Professors Sandra Bartky, Claudia Card, Margaret Simons, J. Davidson Alexander, and William McBride (or their criticisms and suggestions. Final revisions of the essay were completed while I was a fellow in the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in Residence for College Teachers pro- gram at the University of Chicago.

1. Erwin W. Straus, "The Upright Posture," Phenomello{ogical Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1966), pp. 1)7~65. References to particular pages are indicated in the text.

2. Studies continue to be performed that arrive at similar observations. See, for example, Lolas E. Kalverson, Mary Ann Robertson, M. Joanne Safrit, and Thomas W. Roberts, "Effect of Guided Practice on Overhand Throw Ball Velocities of Kin- dergarten Children," Research Quarterly (American Alliance for Health, Physical Educationand Recreation)48 (May1977); pp. 311-18. The study found that boys achieved significantly greater velocities than girls did. See also F. J. J. Buytendijk's remarks in Womall: A Contemporary View (New York:

Newman Press, 1968), pp. 144-45. In raising the example of throwing, Buytendijk is concerned to stress, as am I in this essay, that the important thing to investigate is not the strictly physical phenomenon, but rather the manner in which each sex projects her or his Being-in-the-world through movement.

). Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. xxxv. See also Buytendijk. P: 175-76.

ThrowillX Like II Girl I 157

4. See Beauvoir, The St'COtut Sex. chapter I, 'The Data of Biology." 5. Firestone claims that Beauvoirs account served as the basis of her own thesis

that the oppression of women is rooted in nature and thus requires the transcen- dence of nature itself to be overcome. See The Dialectic of Sex (New York: Bantam Books, 1970). Beauvoir would claim that Firestone is guilty of desituating woman's situation by pinning a source on nature as such. That Firestone would find inspi- ration for her thesis in Beauvoir. however, indicates that perhaps de Beauvoir has not steered away from causes in "nature" as much as is desirable.

6. In his discussion of the "dynamics of feminine existence," Buytendijk focuses precisely on those sorts of motions that are aimless. He claims that it is through these kinds of expressive movements-c-e.g., walking for the sake of walking-s-and not through action aimed at the accomplishment of particular purposes that the pure image of masculine or feminine existence is manifest (Wolllan: A Cniltelllpomry View, p. 278-79). Such an approach, however, contradicts the basic existentialist assumption that Being-in-the-world consists in prujecting purposes and goals that structure one's situatedness. While there is certainly something to be learned from reflecting upon feminine movement in noninstrumental activity, given that accom- plishing tasks is basic to the structure of human existence, it serves as a better starting point for investigation of feminine motility. As I point out at the end of this essay, a full phenomenology of feminine existence must take account of this norunstrumental movement.

7. It is not impossible, moreover, for men to be "feminine" in at least some respects, according to the above definition.

8. On this level of specificity there also exist particular modalities of masculine motility, inasmuch as there is a particular style of movement more or less typical of men. I will not, however, be concerned with those in this essay.

9. See Beauvoir. The Second Sex, chapter 21, "Woman's Situation and Character." 10. It should be noted that this is probably typical only of wpmen in advanced

industrial societies, where the model of the bourgeois woman has been extended to most women. It would not apply to those societies, for example, where most people, including women, do heavy physical work. Nor does this particular ob- servation, of course, hold true in our own society for women who do heavy physical work.

11. See A. M. Cross, "Estimated Versus Actual Physical Strength in Three Ethnic Groups," Child Deuetoinucnt 39 (1968), pp. 28}-90. In a test of children at several different ages, at all but the youngest age level, girls rated themselves lower than boys rated themselves on self-estimates of strength, and as the girls grow older, their self-estimates of strength become even lower.

12. See Marguerite A. Cifton and Hope M. Smith, "Comparison of Expressed Self-Concept of Highly Skilled Males and Females Concerning Motor Performance," Perceptual and Motor Skills 16 (1963), pp. 199-201. Women consistently underesti- mated their level of achievement in skills such as running and jumping far more often than men did.

1}. Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Phef1Ome'1Olosy of Perception, trans., Colin Smith (New York: Humanities Press, 1962). All references to this work are noted in pa- rentheses in the text.

14. Much of the work of Seymour Fisher on various aspects of sex differences in body image correlates suggestively with the phenomenological description de- veloped here. It is difficult to use his conclusions as confirmation of that description, however, because there is something of a speculative aspect to his reasoning. Never- theless, I shall refer to some of these findings with that qualification in mind.

One of Fisher's findings is that women have a greater anxiety about their legs than men do, and he cites earlier studies with the same results. Fisher interprets such leg anxiety as being anxiety about motility itself, because in body conception

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and body image the legs are the body parts most associated with motility. See Fisher, Body Experience in Fantasy and Behavior (New York:Appleton-Century Crofts, 1970),p. 537·If his findings and his interpretation are accurate, this tends to correlate with the sort of inhibition and timidity about movement that I am claiming is an aspect of feminine body comportment. 15. Fisher finds that the most striking difference between men and women in

their general body image is that women have a significantly higher degree of what he calls "body prominence," awareness of and attention to the body. He cites a number of different studies that have the same results. The explanation Fisher gives for this finding is that women are socialized to pay attention to their bodies, to prune and dress them, and to worry about how they look to others. Fisher, pp. 524-25. See also Fisher, "Sex Differences in Body Perception," Psychological Mon- ographs 78 (1964) no. 14. 16. Erik H. Erikson, "Inner and Outer Space: Reflections on Womanhood," Dae·

delus 3 (1964), pp. 582-606. Erikson's interpretation of his findings is also sexist. Having in his opinion discovered a particular significance that "inner space," which he takes to be space within the body, holds for girls, he goes on to discuss the womanly "nature" as womb and potential mother, which must be made compatible with anything else the woman does. 17. Another of Fisher's findings is that women experience themselves as having

more clearly articulated body boundaries than men do. More clearly than men do, they distinguish themselves from their spatial surroundings and take a distance from them. See Fisher, Body Experience in Fantasy and Behavior, p. 528.

18. The number of studies with these results is enormous. See Eleanor E. Mac- coby and Carol N. Jacklin, The Psychology of Sex Differences (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974), pp. 91-98. For a number of years psychologists used the results from tests of spatial ability to generalize about field independence in general, and from that to general "analytic" ability. Thus it was concluded that women have less analytical ability than men do. More recently, however, such generalizations have been seriously called into question. See, for example, Julia A. Sherman, "Prob- lems of SexDiffernces in Space Perception and Aspects of Intellectual Functioning," PsychologicaL Review 74 (1967), pp. 290-99. She notes that wliile women are consis- tently found to be more field-dependent in spatial tasks than men are, on nonspatial tests measuring field independence, women generally perform as well as men do.

19. Nor are girls provided with example of girls and women being physically active. See Mary E. Duquin, "Differential SexRole Socialization Toward Amplitude Appropriation," Research Quarterly (American Alliance for Health, Physical Edu- cation and Recreation) 48 (1977), pp. 188-92. A survey of textbooks for young children revealed that children are thirteen times more likely to see a vigorously active man than a vigorously active woman and three times more likely to see a relatively active man than a relatively active woman.

20. Sherman (see note 18) argues that it is the differential socialization of boys and girls in being encouraged to "tinker," explore, etc.. that acounts for the dif- ference between the two in spatial ability.

21. See L. Kolberg, "A Cognitive-Developmental Analysis of Children's Sex-Role Concepts and Attitudes," in E. E. Maccoby, ed., The Development of Sex Differences (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1966), p. 10l.

22. Lenore J. Weitzman, "Sex Role Socialization," in Io Freeman, ed., Woman: A Feminist Perspective (Palo Alto, Calif.: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1975), pp. HI- 12. 2}. Maccoby and Jacklin, The Psychology of Sex Differences, pp. 9}-94· 24. The manner in which women are objectified by the gaze of the Other is not

the same phenomenon as the objectification by the Other that is a condition of self- consciousness in Sartre's account. See Being and Nothingness, trans.. Hazel E. Barnes

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(New York: Philosophical Library, '956), part three. While the basic ontological category of being for others is an objectified for itself, the objectification that women are subject to is being regarded as a mere in itself. On the particular dynamic of sexual objectification, see Sandra Bartky, "Psychological Oppression," in Sharon Bishop and Marjories Weinzweig, ed., Philosophy and Women (Belmont, Calif.: wads- worth Publishing Co., 1979), pp. 33-41-

25. See Nancy Henley and 10 Freeman, "The Sexual Politics of Interpersonal Behavior," in Freeman, ed.. WOmall: A Feminist Perspective, pp. 391-4°1.