Feminism Essay

Feminist ideas of freedom suggest that outside social forces that are repressive can corrupt an individual’s desires and limits their thinking abilities. Jean Grimshaw was a feminist philosopher who analyzed this concept. Grimshaw with other feminists believed that these repressive forces come from male domination in society. Questions about the self are important to feminists because they are constantly trying to figure out a woman’s autonomy. Feminist philosophers have come up with many approaches to the self. Jean Grimshaw goes back to an argument from Aristotle. Aristotle questions what makes people do things voluntarily and out of free will. Aristotle says that that actions that originate from inside the self are desires or intentions and actions that originate from outside are not. Jean Grimshaw however questions whether those desires that come from outside are not really one’s own desires. There is a constant conflict between internal and external constraints. Feminist authors such as Mary Daly, Marilyn Frye and Kate Millet wrote books on how women have been conditioned in their thinking by men, therefore cannot have their own desires. Feminists agree that women are deprived of their free will because men treat them as robots and this changes a woman’s personality. Based on the books of these three authors there is many things to conclude about the self. The self is aware of its interests, it is altered because of the interference of male domination and the only way to really have a true self is to fight against those social effects of domination. A woman must understand the changes they are going through by men in society in order to reveal the self. I believe that if someone is constantly thinking that there are outside forces that disable form being they they must change that. If the male society undermines women, and women continue to accept it then they are not following their own desires. One must understand the constraints that they are dealing with in order to make independent choices to be liberated.