On Female Body Experience: "Throwing Like a Girl" and Other Essays

by Iris Marion Young

Written over a span of more than two decades, the essays by Iris Marion Young collected in this volume describe diverse aspects of women's lived body experience in modern Western societies. Drawing on the ideas of several twentieth century continental philosophers--including Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Heidegger, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty--Young constructs rigorous analytic categories for interpreting embodied subjectivity. The essays combine theoretical description of experience with normative evaluation of the unjust constraints on their freedom and opportunity that continue to burden many women.

The lead essay rethinks the purpose of the category of "gender" for feminist theory, after important debates have questioned its usefulness. Other essays include reflection on the meaning of being at home and the need for privacy in old age residences as well as essays that analyze aspects of the experience of women and girls that have received little attention even in feminist theory--such as the sexuality of breasts, or menstruation as punctuation in a woman's life story. Young describes the phenomenology of moving in a pregnant body and the tactile pleasures of clothing.

While academically rigorous, the essays are also written with engaging style, incorporating vivid imagery and autobiographical narrative. On Female Body Experience raises issues and takes positions that speak to scholars and students in philosophy, sociology, geography, medicine, nursing, and education.

Genres: Feminism, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Gender, Essays, Academic, Sociology

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Iris Marion Young was an American political theorist and feminist focused on the nature of justice and social difference. She served as Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and was affiliated with the Center for Gender Studies and the Human Rights program there.

Reviews

[Zanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

For many women [...] a space surrounds us in imagination that we are not free to move beyond

~ Throwing Like a Girl

I particularly liked the last essay here, on breasts (to my own surprise), and the wonderful piece Impartiality and the Civic Public, which deals a heavy blow to deontology and its place in political philosophy and organisation:

Impartiality names a point of view of reason that stands apart from any interests and desires [...] the ideal of impartiality requires constructing the ideal of a self abstracted from the context of any real persons: the deontological self is not committed to any particular ends, has no particular history, is a member of no communities, has no body.

This leads to the expulsion of desire, affectivity and the body from reason. Since feelings and desires are excluded from moral reason, they are all apprehended as equally bad (compare this with virtue ethics, where moral reasoning's work is to evaluate desires and cultivate the good ones). Moral decisions based on considerations of sympathy, caring and assessment of differentiated needs are deemed irrational, not objective, sentimental. Ultimately, Young argues, deontology opposes happiness and morality, trying to master inner nature instead of directing it to grow in the best directions. She proposes instead a dialogic ethics where all perspectives must be heard, not eliminated or abstracted into unity.

Some of the insights here on the history of feminist thought and on "group difference" in politics might seem a bit obvious now or are simply much more clearly articulated by Black feminist theorists like bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins. Young marks her subject position as a White woman and makes some efforts to note other standpoints such as Black feminist critiques of trends in "second wave" feminism, but more importantly she rejects universalising accounts of female experience with strong theory, so that while some of the discussions of female experience reflect white cis middle class USian experience, they do not close down the space to exclude other accounts.

Still, I got pretty bored from time to time with the psychoanalysis and biological essentialist "gynocentric" perspectives that were sometimes invoked, usually as part of a historical narrative, but sometimes uncritically. In identifying the poles of humanism and gynocentrism in feminist thought, Young's critique of the former is more robust than of the latter, and in the book's introduction she says that she has "climbed off the fence to gynocentrism", but I feel that many of the gynocentric ideas she discusses are problematic. If humanist feminism wants us all to be judged by the same standards, it fails to note that those standards are thoroughly masculinist, and most women are bound by various circumstances to fall short against them. Gynocentrism rightly points this out, but by unwittingly centering white, middle class, Anglophone, "western", cisgender and (not always) heterosexual women, it's playing spot the difference between the lives of white men and women in the same social positions and coming up with dubious psychoanalysis and implications that the world would be just great if only women ran it, or were taking an equal part in running it, a proposition that leaves the white-supremacist capitalist imperialist world order largely untouched. Young asserts that gynocentrism creates a perspective from which to mount a critique of any social/political institution, and I agree that this could be possible, but I think the dangers of essentialising and universalising she doesn't fail to point out are very much evident in some of the material quoted or summarised as gynocentric. While creativity is in evidence, and it's obviously not a bad thing to analyse one's own experiences or those of people sharing some identity, many White writers seem to get bogged down psychoanalysing women's oppression or "women's culture" in a manner that borders on actually excluding those women who don't have children, for example. The potential for trans-exclusionary theory and practice is heavy. Another issue in the title essay is that the female body as disabled has a long racialised history (not discussed) and is an exclusively White body. That Young marks the particularity and limitations of her discussion doesn't entirely prevent its being unsatisfying, because this history has been repeatedly brought to light by Black intellectuals from Sojourner Truth onwards. I wish Young had drawn on some Black feminist/womanist texts, but that might actually have collapsed the whole binary of humanism vs. gynocentrism in revealing the narrowness of "mainstream" i.e. White USian feminist theory.

Overall, the discussion developed here of ethics and politics provides great critical and creative tools and leads easily to useful conclusions:

In a heterogeneous public, differences are publicly recognised an acknowledged as irreducible, by which I mean that people from one perspective or history can never completely understand or adopt the point of view of those with other group-based perspectives and histories, yet commitment to the need and desire to decide together the society's policies fosters communication across those differences.

[Tia · Rating 4 out of 5]

My funniest story about this book is that I once ended up bowling with a group of mostly straight men that I didn’t know and after I lost the first round, I thought about Young’s “Throwing Like a Girl” essay and all of the psychosocial and structural reasons why girls don’t use the full potential strength and space of their bodies, and so I concentrated on overcoming this in the second round and I CAME IN FIRST. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that feminist philosophy or existential phenomenology are useless….

Anyways, I don’t work with that essay a ton anymore but it did essentially birth my current academic interests and I really enjoyed returning to the first chapter here too and understanding its claims more thoroughly. Hope I get time to read some of Young’s political theory in the coming years too.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

These writings bring me out of my body and person and into another. Perspective shifting stuff. Inter library loan is amazing!

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best feminists' works today! and will truly be a classic soon. I totally love her existencial phenomenological approach. Maybe that's just me. I'm a pluralist as well as a pheonomenologist. Too bad that Iris Young died so early. Otherwise, I could completely imagine myself studying with her, directly benifit from her wonderful insight and knowledge.

Young eloquently covered a wide range of topics which are essential for women's whole life cycle. From body to home, from young to old age, from identity to subjectivity. I value her critiques of Beauvoir and Butler, they are both right to the point and constructive.

If there's someone truly "beyond gender dichotomy", I'd say Young is one of them. Butler is still fighting and deconstructing gender/sex, her action itself is creating another dichotomy by denying gender/sex all together. Beauvoir is not our contemporary. Even though her ground-breaking work is still insightful and inspiring today, she herself is by no means limited and constrained by her time and situation, denial is still very prominent in her work. I agree that under those conditions, denial might be necessary (so that your voice get heard). Because of her work and all the work by previous feminists, today, we could have the luxury to say, maybe we don't really have to reject everything :)

[jadey · Rating 4 out of 5]

If nothing else, everyone should read “House and Home”, in particular the Interlude: My Mother’s Story. Of course this takes a v white feminist perspective, but the truth is, to all you moral purists, you cannot ask so much out of everyone, and much of these experiences are fundamentally rather universal. Young is brilliant as always. Great complement to Berger’s Ways of Seeing. Incidentally a lot of my work this sem touches on gender, so to all you dismissive of Gender Wokeness, what really changed my perspective on things is this: gender is the first and fundamental relation by which we operate with the outer world. There’s merit in examining this building block of desire. Fascism is obviously about sex and women. Everything is about sex except for sex, which is still ideally about sex.

“Since woman functions for man as the ground of his subjectivity, she has no support for her own self. She is derelict. She too must deal with the same loss as he, with the abandonment of mortality, radical freedom, and groundlessness, and the expulsion of warmth and security of the mother’s body. By means of her, man makes for himself a home to substitute for this loss. He creates by holding her as his muse, he rests by having her serve his needs at home. Her only comfort is to try to derive her satisfaction from being in the home, the Other. She tries to take her subjectivity from her being-for-him. She tries to envelop herself with decoration. She covers herself with jewelry? makeup, clothing, in the attempt to make an envelope, to give herself a place. But in the end she is left homeless, derelict, with no room of her own, since he makes room for himself by using her as his envelope.”


Read for Sci-Fi & Dissertation

[retired to the salton sea · Rating 4 out of 5]

insane body of work. deserves a reread soon. you will be in my masters thesis iris young and that is a promise!

[Peter Herold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very easy to read, makes good case for concept of the lived body as alternative to the problematic pairing (biological) sex ~ (social) gender. Great that you have 20 years’ of essays that Young looks back on and comments on when they’re republished here in 2005.

[吕不理 · Rating 5 out of 5]

对于女性的生活体验细致入微地进行描述 一点都不唧唧歪歪 没有怨气和戾气 就是客观描摹 广泛援引 让我共鸣的时刻实在有很多。
在这个社会里 被无意识塑造的文化是怎样深刻地影响着我们的言行 改变着自我的认知。内敛式阅读令我渐渐有点明白我是什么 什么塑造了我 我不应该坦然随波逐流的。

[leti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha costado mucho entender algunas cosas porque está en inglés pero muy chulo di tu verdad !!!!

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

read for my thesis project

[Amanda Chiu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love it and yes we could argue to a certain extent that it adheres to a biological binary but I think it translates a lot to body experiences more generally for marginalized people. Would highly recommend.

[Helmut · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nichteuklidische Körper
Ich habe schon in anderen Rezensionen kundgetan, dass ich nicht an eine Trennung von Geist und Körper glaube. Das Konzept des "gelebten Körpers/lived body", das Young hier von anderen Autoren übernimmt und aufbereitet, spielt mir daher voll in die Karten - das Geschlecht als irgendwie geartete Essenz zu sehen geht ja in eine ähnliche Richtung. Die ganze strukturalistische Analyse von Menschen und ihren Beziehungen, die wir im Studium in "Gender Studies" und ähnlichem vergekaut bekamen, ist ein schwaches Hilfkonstrukt im Vergleich. Auch wenn Young die Trennung "sex" und "gender" (interessant, dass wir im Deutschen keine echte Vokabel für diese Trennung zwischen anatomisch/physiologischem und sozialem/strukturellem Geschlecht kennen) noch aufrechterhalten will, um "gender" für Strukturanalysen im Sinne des Feminismus weiter nutzen zu können, so ist für die Betrachtung von "echten" Menschen, ihre Interaktion und Position in der Welt der "living body" ein viel geeigneteres, weil weniger abstraktes Konzept. Unser Körper, und das gilt natürlich nicht nur für Frauen, definiert uns. Es gibt kein Subjekt ohne Körper, und wenn wir interagieren, tun wir das über Körperfunktionen.

Das ist ein äußerst spannendes Thema, mit dem man als Mann immer irgendwie in Kontakt kommt - meine erste Frage ist, warum Frauen immer und grundsätzlich mit ihrem Körper unzufrieden sind? Denn hier beginnen dann die Unterschiede. Frauen und Männer sehen und behandeln ihren Körper unterschiedlich. Bereits im ersten Essay, das auch der Sammlung den Titel gab, werden faszinierende Ideen diesbezüglich aufgestellt. Eine frühe Konditionierung und gesellschaftliche Konventionen und Strukturen führen dazu, dass Frauen ein anderes Körperbild haben als Männer. Gewiss sind diese Ideen aus der Perspektive des Feminismus etwas gefärbt, doch die Schlussfolgerung, dass Frauen unterbewusst ihren Körper als von "sich" entrückten Gegenstand wahrnehmen, der sowohl von ihnen selbst als auch von anderen immer beobachtet wird und zu körperlichen Handlungen, die Männer selbstverständlich ausführen, gebracht werden muss (Beispiele der Autorin hier sind das titelgebende Werfen eines Balls oder das Springen über Steine im Fluss), finde ich spannend.

Der "gelebte Körper", so Young, dehnt sich dann aber auch auf unsere Umgebung, insbesondere unser "Heim" aus: Wir statten nicht nur unsere Wohnstatt mit den Sedimenten unseres Lebens aus, wir passen auch unsere Körper dieser Umgebung an, in der wir uns irgendwann selbst im Dunkeln gut zurechtfinden; mein Bett wird gefühlt zu einem Körperteil, etwas das zu mir gehört - jeder, der öfter in "fremden" Betten schlafen muss, kann das gewiss sofort nachvollziehen.

Leider kann die sprachliche Ebene mit dem Inhalt nicht mithalten. Young kann offensichtlich kein halbwegs verständliches Englisch schreiben, sondern versetzt jeden Satz mit einer guten Dosis von mindestens 3 -Ismen irgendeiner Art. Man muss sich schon sehr konzentrieren, um in diesem Gewusel von geschachtelten und verschränkten Fachbegriffen dem Gedankengang noch folgen zu können. Darüber hinaus ist zuviel davon, was Young analysiert, Freudiana - Männer sind nur auf der Suche nach dem abgegrenzten, warmen Uterus und nach einem Mutterersatz, und das erklärt fast alles. Stellenweise wirkt der Text dadurch etwas gerichtet - das Problem wird so formuliert, dass die Analyse passt.

Kluge Gedanken, in etwas viel Worthülsen und fragwürdiger Psychologie verpackt; doch die verpackten Perlen im Text machen die Lektüre lohnenswert.

[Joy Simmons]

Where else can you find a book with an essay about breasted existence and a chapter entitled, "Menstrual Meditations"? Even if you don't dig the phenomenological framework within which Young's work is situated, it's a fun read. Despite the fact that it occasionally offended my poststructuralist sensibilities, I found it refreshing to read a philosophical work that takes the everyday embodied experience of being a woman seriously.

[Sarah Schieffer Riehl · Rating 3 out of 5]

the book seems really interesting, but the value of the ideas lies mostly in the titles of the essays. the essays themselves are fairly tedious. still, valuable, especially thinking about body experience (i won't claim bodily phenomenology generally; that's a bit strong for my taste).

[l a r a s n o w w h i t e · Rating 5 out of 5]

review for throwing like a girl

[Tjara Visser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary I wrote for uni:

Youngs essay ‘Throwing like a girl: a phenomenology of feminine body comportment, motility and spatiality’ scrutinizes the well-known and ancient insult ‘you throw like a girl’. By setting out research of thinkers like Erwin Straus, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty and Erik Erikson, Young is able to write a fresh and empowering essay. The essence of the essay; draw attention to the fact that the difference in motility between men and woman is not to be explained through the particular physiology or biology, but through the situation – here, contemporary advanced industrial, urban, and commercial society – we live and learned to live in. For the development of the essay, Young starts with the acknowledgement that there is indeed a difference in motility between the sexes. “We tend to concentrate our effort on those parts of the body most immediately connected to the task”. This, she argues, comes from of our lack of trust in our body, we doubt our capability and strength. But how to specify these feminine ways of moving? In paragraph two, there are three (contradicting) modalities of feminine motility found: an ambiguous transcendence, an inhibited intentionality and a discontinuous unity with its surroundings influenced by the self-image of women and their experience of their body as a fragile thing. This keeps the woman’s body away from using, as argued in paragraph three, her true objective space. Women experience space different than men. They are “field-dependent”. The combination of feminine motility – how women move in a certain way - and feminine spatiality – how women experience space – (and practice – important role) brings us to the conclusion that , a woman’s motility is learned as a woman grows up and understand her ‘place’ in the sexist oppression in contemporary society.

I really loved this essay. Almost unbelievable that this was written in 1980! One of the best feminist works I read so far :)

[Lauryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a really interesting and thought-provoking read, and i think it gave language to some ideas that, until now, i have been unable to articulate. though i've tried to pinpoint specific essays to recommend, i find it impossible to just select one or two; every concept explored in these essays is intrinsic to the female experience, and no story is of lesser significance than the others. young's incorporation of theories from kristeva, irigaray, heidegger, de beauvoir etc. engaged deeply with the respective elements of the female experience within patriarchal, sexist societies, and her nuanced analyses were certainly eye-opening. this book is a must-read for anyone interested in feminist philosophy - it resonated with me deeply, and offered valuable insights into the systemic oppression of women in contemporary 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.” - throwing like a girl, p. 42

“we remember our excitement at the thought of growing up, wearing stockings, having sex, leaping forward into responsibility. at the same time, we look regretfully over the bleeding wall that separates us from our childhood with a little bit of loss, a sense of the real world having crashed in on us too soon.” - menstrual meditations, p. 121

[Madelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

“In the end, for many women, the [experience of menstrual constraint and shame] may be less damaging to our dignity and self-esteem than the [stigma attached to sexual being and action that deviates from normative heterosexuality] is for those stigmatized as fags, dykes, or other buggers, some of them women. A queer perspective teaches that the multitude of ways that persons are made ashamed or positioned as odd ought not to be understood as a consequence of their being or actions, but that the trouble is with the idea of normal”

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a 3.5 rounded up. I liked what it was saying a lot of the time but I think that it was faulted by the writing style, with it being a feminist *philosophy* book it needed a more logical, line of argument style rather than just rambling. It feels more like a journal entry than an essay. Some of the academics she cites and mentions made me say “what the fuck!!!” out loud, which was probably her intention, but I loved the Beauvoir mention! Overall, I did agree with some of the arguments so it was nice 😊💗

[Anandini Mitra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic book to read, especially the second essay of "Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality." It extends beyond all of the other previously established modules on the body comportment of females, and truly explores all dimensions of it.

[Green Iona · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only read the essays, Pregnant Embodiment, and Breasted Experience because they were relevant to my pregnancy right now. I'd love to go back and read the rest. I found these essays very enlightening.

[brisingr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really interesting and great ideas and points of view in here, highly enjoyed reading through these essays!

[Allie Pae · Rating 4 out of 5]

she ate, i fear.

[Ally Yang]

【8 Aug 2025 / 博客來 / 312】

[l · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title essay is incredible. I'm not sold on most of the rest tbh.

[JW · Rating 4 out of 5]

2023年2月二版一刷

找個頭腦清楚的午後會再想看第二遍的書。

第一次看完時比較有興趣的是第2.4.6.7.8章。

鄉愁的渴望永遠朝向他處，記憶則是對我們之所以成為我們的確認。p.314

[Dr. A · Rating 5 out of 5]

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Read this and reviews of other classics in Western Philosophy on the History page of www.BestPhilosophyBooks.org (a thinkPhilosophy Production).
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The essays collected under the title On Female Body Experience represent twenty years of work in feminist phenomenology by one of its chief practitioners, Iris Marion Young. These essays showcase some of the best things that feminist philosophy has to offer - academically rigorous analysis, phenomenological descriptions, and personal, reflective evaluations.

Readers will want to begin with "Throwing Like a Girl,” Marion Young’s best loved essay that examines the gendered, embodied differences in a throwing exercise designed to explore gender differences. Readers will also not want to miss the follow up to this essay, “Pregnant Embodiment,” a wholly unique phenomenological analysis of, well, pregnant embodiment, by the author.

These essays are sure to please a diverse audience, from philosophers and phenomenologists, to readers interested in sociology, medical practice and nursing, and education.

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Read this and reviews of other classics in Western Philosophy on the History page of www.BestPhilosophyBooks.org (a thinkPhilosophy Production).
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[Joseph Sverker]

Det här är en mycket välskriven och välbalanserad bok i sin argumentation. Marion Young visar hur genusforskning bör gå till. Hon har en utmärkt förståelse för filosofi och ger mycket väl genomforskade belägg för sin påståenden. Jag måste säga att jag hamnar väldigt nära henne i mina egna åsikter, även om jag förstås inte håller med om allt. Jag vet t.ex. inte om hon riktigt löser problemet med vad kvinna som identitet egentligen är. Hon hänvisar till Sartres teori om serialitet och nog är den ett bra försök på att förklara människan identitet. Men även den har svårigheter att förklara det antika problemet med enhet och mångfald, hur man kan vara en individ samtidigt som man formas av gruppen. Jag tycker att Guntons nytestamentliga av Hegel gör ett mycket bättre jobb just här.

Boken avslutas med ett otroligt intressant kapitel om kvinnor och kroppslighet. Det här borde alla idrottslärare läsa tycker jag, och alla förskolelärare.

[Bibliophile10 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Were Young still alive, I'd love to talk with her, partly because she's way smarter than I am. Her essays, while heavy in academic and philosophical lingo, are so piercing, so intelligent. The personal essayist in me felt the greatest connection when Young lapsed into first-person anecdotes, which was rare and seemingly accidental. All of the essays are good, but "Throwing Like a Girl" was the one that most hit home for me, the one that made me begin to understand the ways men and women learn to trust their bodies differently. While the language is clunky--most of these were written for scholarly journals, after all--and the terms at times not clearly enough defined, this book is, to a feminist like me, indispensable, and I look forward to investigating other books in this Studies in Feminist Philosophy series.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quotes:

There are "certain observable differences and rather ordinary ways in which women typically comport themselves and move differently from the way that men do... Women take shorter steps, keep arms close to themselves, throw a ball differently as an outward manifestation of social conditioning to female inferiority... Until a human can trust her body to comport itself in the direction of its possibilities--the possibilities will remain overlooked.