Phenomenology from a feminist perspective.

Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex. (1908-1986) French existential philosopher and feminist 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-body/
"Along with other phenomenologists, particularly Merleau-Ponty, and, of course Sartre, Beauvoir recognizes that “to be present in the world implies strictly that there exists a body which is at once a material thing in the world and a point of view towards the world” (Beauvoir 39). What is central to her account is that such bodily existence and the point of view it provided, is lived differently for men and women. "
Merleau-Ponty was presenting his theories from a white male perspective yet implying that these experiences are universal regardless of gender or race, most especially with his ideas around sex. However the notion of embodiment can be said to be inherently genderless as it is unique to each individual regardless of gender.

Accepted constructed notion of the association of mind and rationality with men and body and emotions with women (also action and passivity.)

Despite the feminist enquiry of De Beauvoir, the duality of mind and body is still implied in her writing. The struggle for equality still had an inherent axiom that the body was separate to the mind/self that had rights over it. 


http://www.rotman.uwo.ca/feminist-phenomenology-race-and-perception-an-interview-with-alia-al-saji/ 
Alia Al-Saji is an Associate Professor in the dept of Philosophy at McGill university.
"Perception proceeds in a quasi-immediate way – I just grasp a whole, it has a meaning for me. That relies on habitual schemas and on learning. Merleau-Ponty actually says that we learn to see.Perception is also intentional. It’s not intentional in the sense of being voluntary, but in the phenomenological sense of being about a thing that we grasp as having meaning. That meaning is not just there in the thing, it is constituted in relation to the perceiving body. And perception is generally open. Although it is habitual, it is still responsive to difference. Habits can change and improvise in relation to the world. This is a dynamic relation– there is a kind of feedback loop. We are affected by the world and we make meaning of it. Merleau-Ponty will even describe this as a kind of dialogue."



I am realising how much implicit bias we operate under; it's confusing;  my judgements or opinions or actions are pre-formed; culturally programmed. To change our perception means putting ourselves in different situations to challenge our inherited beliefs.Actually make us stop and think and therefore maybe change. Escape the net of constructs that we operate within.


Judith Butler,(1956-) is Professor of Comparative Literature and Rhetoric at Uni of California and a  theorist of power, gender, sexuality and identity. She argues that " feminism had made a mistake by trying to assert that 'women' were a group with common characteristics and interests. That approach, Butler said, performed 'an unwitting regulation and reification of gender relations' -- reinforcing a binary view of gender relations in which human beings are divided into two clear-cut groups, women and men. Rather than opening up possibilities for a person to form and choose their own individual identity, therefore, feminism had closed the options down."    http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm

Butler argues that this clear cut division between men and women  fixes the idea of gender
as rigid and indeed is culturally imposed. She feels that gender identity is expressed in terms of feeling: feeling feminine or feeling manly and so gender is actually a free floating performance which changes according to circumstance and is not a fixed inherent essence.