Marilyn Frye

Marilyn Frye is an American feminist philosopher who taught for many years at Michigan State University. Working within analytic philosophy, she applied careful conceptual analysis to questions of sex, race and power. Her collection The Politics of Reality (1983) includes the essay 'Oppression', with its image of a birdcage: no single wire traps the bird, but the wires together form a cage. Other essays analyse sexism, anger, separatism and the 'arrogant eye' that sees others only in relation to oneself. Later work examined whiteness as a social and political category.

Key ideas

• Oppression is a network of related barriers that together confine a group, like the wires of a birdcage.
• Women often face a double bind, in which every available option brings penalty or censure.
• The 'arrogant eye' organises everything around the perceiver's interests; the 'loving eye' sees others as independent.
• Separatism, women controlling access to themselves, is an exercise of power.
• Being white is a social and political position, not simply a biological fact.

Major works

• The Politics of Reality (1983)
• Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism, 1976–1992 (1992)

In the Book corner

• The Politics of Reality 1983 · Intermediate
  A collection of nine essays in feminist theory, written from a lesbian feminist standpoint. The opening essay, 'Oppression', is the most widely…

In the conversation

No topics yet. Start one about this thinker.