Feminism and Physicality
At the start of her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Mary Wollstonecraft makes a concession:
‘In the government of the physical world it is observable that the female in point of strength is, in general, inferior to the male. This is the law of nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. A degree of physical superiority [of men] cannot, therefore, be denied…’ (p. 72)
Her book, one of the most important foundational texts of feminism, is often understood as advocating equal rights, and above all, equal educations for women and girls to those enjoyed by men and boys. There is no reason why women can’t be the equals of men mentally, and in their virtue, if they are brought up in the same way that we bring up boys. Nevertheless, she seems to be admitting, it is just natural that men are superior to women physically, so physical equality is not her goal. We cannot overcome nature; therefore, physical equality of the sexes would be impossible, unrealisable, and a foolish ambition.
However, Wollstonecraft goes on the present a number of arguments that directly contradict this initial assertion. As she puts it in one place, ‘… is woman in a natural state?’ (p. 266). Perhaps not. Woman’s state is created; that is: ‘… the weakness of mind and body, which men have endeavoured … to perpetuate.’ (p. 266). She points out a number of the many ways in which women and girls are discouraged and outright stopped from taking physical exercise, from living healthy, outdoors lifestyles, and from eating as well as men. Just as education can improve the mind, so can physical education improve the body: for women as well as men.
It might be said that lifestyle changes could strengthen women’s bodies but that men are still naturally stronger than women since, if they both existed under equal conditions, men would always have the advantage. But Wollstonecraft has a devastating reply to this claim: ‘… it cannot be demonstrated that woman is essentially inferior to man because she has always been subjugated.’ (p. 104). Why assume that man would be stronger than woman in equal circumstances when this has never been tested?
Wollstonecraft is sometimes depicted as an old-fashioned, liberal feminist, perhaps only of historical interest to contemporary feminist thought. But her argument here remains genuinely confronting and radical. Perhaps she knew it was so confronting that she had to start her book with a concession so as not to discourage readers, whom she knew would mostly be men. Only gradually did she soften them up with arguments, and then allow them to discover the conclusions for themselves. Just as women’s mind were constructed by our social arrangements, so too were their bodies, and we have made women weaker than they need be. Devastating.
Mary was writing in 1792 and we might have hoped for progress since then. But we still see how the physicality of women’s bodies is policed, how women are expected to be small and weak, and how much societal scorn and punishment is heaped on them if they dare to violate these norms. American rugby player and Olympian Ilona Maher demonstrates how this is the case even now, in 2024. Every internet troll who directs hate towards her, says she is a man, thinks her body unnatural, is proving Mary’s point. They are policing the gender norms, they are serving patriarchy through misogyny, they are part of the very mechanism that creates the physical differences between men and women. They prove that this difference is not natural but created. Ilona offers a vision of what women can be, and it terrifies the patriarchs.
In raising the question of the physical, of women’s bodies in relation to men’s, Wollstonecraft’s feminism strikes at the heart of the matter. A justification of patriarchy has often been that, because men are stronger, it is right that they be the heads of their families, as their protectors, and the heads of society, for the same reason. Wollstonecraft gives us the tools to question this justification. In doing so, we start to question the very basis of patriarchy. Because of what it shows about the potential strength of women’s bodies, and challenges sexist presumptions around physicality, sport has now become central to the feminist struggle. The defenders of the patriarchal order know this just as well.
[Page numbers refer to the Oxford World Classics 2008 edition of Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman]