Toward an Expressivist View of Women's Autonomy

Abstract

Feminists have disagreed about whether women can choose gendered subordination autonomously. Less attention has been paid, however, to the socio-ontological questions that underlie this debate. This article introduces novel cases of ‘thwarted autonomy,’ in which women pursue autonomy but in ways that reinforce gendered subordination, in order to challenge dominant proceduralist and substantivist views, as well as motivate an expressivist view of the social self as a promising foundation for an account of autonomy. On this view, which draws on the Hegelian tradition, agents must embody their desires and values in the social world to achieve self-understanding. Social meanings and norms therefore mediate the form an agent’s expressive activity takes, and the sense of self she develops. An expressivist view, I argue, allows us to reinterpret women’s outward acquiescence to gendered subordination as an attempt to express autonomy in an oppressive social context. It also points towards a robustly social conception of autonomy to aid in the diagnosis and redress of patriarchal oppression.