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

Iris Marion Young’s 1980 “Throwing Like a Girl” stands as a landmark work in feminist philosophy, pioneering the application of phenomenological methods to analyze women’s bodily experience. Through in-depth analysis of the seemingly simple act of throwing, Young reveals how gendered bodily experience profoundly affects women’s ways of being in the world.

Theoretical Background and Methodological Innovation

Combining Phenomenology and Feminism

Young uniquely synthesizes two important philosophical traditions:

Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of the Body: Merleau-Ponty argues that the body is not an objective thing but the foundation of our experience of the world. We understand and engage with the world through our body’s motility and spatiality. The body is the source of “I can,” the center of action and intentionality.

De Beauvoir’s Existentialist Feminism: In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir argues that woman is defined as “Other” and associated with “immanence,” while man is linked with “transcendence.” Women are trapped in immanence, unable to fully realize their potential as free subjects.

Young’s innovation lies in synthesizing these theories to analyze how women concretely embody this tension between immanence and transcendence in their bodily experience.

Throwing as Analytical Starting Point

Young begins with Erwin Straus’s research, which found significant differences in throwing motions between girls and boys:

• Boys tend to use their entire bodies, generating power through torso rotation, stepping, and full-body coordination
• Girls tend to keep their bodies relatively still, primarily using their arms with less engagement of other body parts

This difference is not biologically determined but socially produced. Five-year-old children already display these differences, indicating that gendered bodily training begins very early.

The Triple Structure of Feminine Bodily Experience

Young identifies three key features of feminine bodily experience:

1. Ambiguous Transcendence

Women’s bodily action exhibits a contradictory character: simultaneously projecting toward the world while withdrawing back. This “ambiguous transcendence” manifests as:

• Coexistence of Goal and Limitation: Women simultaneously experience “I can” and “I cannot.” For example, in sports, women might simultaneously feel the desire to achieve a goal and fear failure or injury.

• Partial Engagement: Women often don’t fully commit to action. When throwing, they might use only their arm rather than their whole body, as if certain body parts are “held back” or “protected.”

• Self-Limitation: Women frequently preset their capability limits before attempting, and these expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies.

2. Inhibited Intentionality

Intentionality is a core phenomenological concept, referring to consciousness always being “about” something. In bodily action, intentionality manifests as the body’s directedness toward goals. Young finds that women’s bodily intentionality is “inhibited”:

• Hesitation and Uncertainty: Women often display hesitation in action, as if questioning their capabilities. This hesitation is not merely psychological but embodied in bodily posture.

• Double Attention: Women focus not only on the action’s goal but simultaneously on how their bodies appear to others. This split attention weakens the action’s efficacy.

• Defensive Posture: Women’s bodies frequently adopt defensive postures, as if protecting themselves from potential harm or humiliation.

3. Discontinuous Unity

Effective bodily action requires coordinated unity of body parts. But women’s bodily experience is often “discontinuous”:

• Bodily Fragmentation: Women may experience the body as separate parts rather than a unified whole. In throwing, the arm seems disconnected from the rest of the body.

• Lack of Fluidity: Women’s movements often lack smooth continuity; different body parts’ movements appear separate and uncoordinated.

• Spatial Division: Women tend to experience space as separate zones rather than a continuous field of movement.

Socialization Processes and Bodily Training

Young analyzes how these features are formed through socialization:

Differential Treatment in Childhood

From birth, girls and boys receive different bodily training:

• Activity Types: Boys are encouraged to engage in activities requiring full-body involvement (climbing trees, wrestling), while girls are directed toward more static or fine motor activities (playing with dolls, drawing).

• Spatial Usage: Boys are allowed to occupy larger spaces, while girls are taught to be “contained” and “ladylike.”

• Risk Attitudes: Boys’ adventurous behavior is often praised as “brave,” while girls are warned of various dangers, cultivating caution and fear.

Clothing and Bodily Constraints

Women’s clothing traditionally restricts bodily movement:

• Physical Limitations: Skirts, high heels, etc., limit range and manner of movement
• Postural Requirements: Certain clothing requires specific bodily postures (e.g., “ladylike sitting” when wearing skirts)
• Self-Monitoring: Women must constantly attend to whether their clothing is “appropriate,” diverting attention from action itself

Objectification and Self-Objectification

Women are socialized to focus on their role as objects to be looked at:

• Appearance Anxiety: Women are taught the importance of appearance, leading to concerns about “how they look” during action
• Sexual Objectification: Women’s bodies are sexualized, making certain movements seem “inappropriate” or “provocative”
• Internalized Gaze: Women internalize external evaluative gazes, self-censoring even when unobserved

Spatiality and Modes of Being

Young’s analysis extends to how women experience and use space:

Enclosed Sense of Space

Women tend to experience an “enclosed” sense of space:

• Contraction of Personal Space: Women often limit personal space to the immediate vicinity of their bodies
• Reluctance to Extend: In public spaces, women tend to occupy as little space as possible
• Boundary Awareness: Women are more sensitive to spatial boundaries and less likely to transgress them

Passive Spatial Relations

Women’s relationship to space is often passive:

• Waiting to Be Given Space: Rather than actively occupying or creating space
• Adapting to Given Space: Adjusting themselves to fit space rather than changing space to suit themselves
• Object in Space: Positioning themselves as objects in space rather than subjects of space

Philosophical and Political Significance

Questioning Universal Human Experience

Young’s work questions philosophical assumptions about “universal” human experience. The bodily experience Merleau-Ponty describes may primarily reflect masculine experience, revealing gender blind spots in philosophical tradition.

The Relationship Between Body and Freedom

Young’s analysis shows that limitations in bodily experience directly affect human freedom and self-realization. If women’s bodily capabilities are systematically limited, their potential as free subjects is also limited.

Possibilities for Change

While Young’s analysis reveals deep structural problems, she also indicates possibilities for change:

• The Liberating Potential of Sports: Participating in sports can help women rediscover bodily capabilities
• Feminist Consciousness: Recognizing the social construction of these limitations is the first step to overcoming them
• Changing Bodily Practices: Through consciously changing bodily practices, women can redefine their bodily experience

Critiques and Developments

Intersectional Perspectives

Subsequent critics note that Young’s analysis may primarily reflect white middle-class women’s experience. Women of different races, classes, and cultural backgrounds may have different bodily experiences:

• Working-class women may develop different bodily capabilities through labor
• Different cultures’ gender norms may produce different bodily training
• Disabled women face additional complexities in bodily experience

Transgender Perspectives

Transgender theory provides new perspectives for understanding gendered bodily experience:

• Transgender experiences challenge simple correspondences between bodily experience and biological sex
• Bodily experience changes during gender transition provide unique windows into studying gendered bodily training

Positive Feminine Bodily Experiences

Some critics argue Young focuses too much on limitations and negative experiences, neglecting positive aspects of women’s bodily experience:

• Bodily intimacy and care between women
• Bodily capabilities in maternal experience
• Alternative bodily practices created by women

Contemporary Significance and Applications

Sports and Physical Education

Young’s theory has significantly influenced physical education:

• Gender-Inclusive Curricula: Designing programs that encourage all genders to fully use bodily capabilities
• Challenging Stereotypes: Questioning notions that certain sports are “masculine” or “feminine”
• Empowerment Orientation: Viewing sports as pathways to developing bodily confidence and capability

Bodily Politics in the Workplace

Young’s analysis helps understand gender dynamics in professional settings:

• Spatial Occupation: How women’s seating choices and bodily postures in meetings affect their participation and influence
• Body Language: Cultivating more confident bodily expression
• Dress Codes: Questioning professional dress requirements that limit women’s bodily freedom

Gender Justice in Public Space

Young’s theory has inspired reflection on public space design:

• Safety and Freedom: Creating public spaces where all genders feel safe and free
• Inclusive Design: Spatial design considering different bodily experiences and needs
• Reclaiming Space: Spatial occupation strategies in feminist movements

Conclusion: A Vision of Bodily Liberation

“Throwing Like a Girl” is not merely a description of women’s bodily experience but a call for bodily liberation. Young shows us that changing women’s bodily experience requires not just individual effort but fundamental social structural change.

This requires us to rethink:

• How we raise children, giving all genders equal opportunities for bodily exploration
• How we design spaces and institutions to support rather than limit full bodily expression
• How we create culture that celebrates bodily strength and capability rather than focusing solely on appearance

Ultimately, Young’s work reminds us that feminism concerns not only abstract rights and opportunities but also the most concrete, everyday bodily experiences. Only when women can fully and freely inhabit their bodies and fully exercise their bodily capabilities can they truly become free subjects. As Young says, this is not about making women “like men” but about creating a world where everyone can fully realize their bodily potential.