Feminist existentialism

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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) Black Feminist Thought (1990) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993) Whipping Girl (2007) The Promise of Happiness (2010)
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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.