Sexless minds, sexless bodies: Francois Poullain de la barre, Gabrielle Suchon, and early modern feminist thought

Abstract

The thesis argues that the philosophical tools that early modern feminist thinkers have used to argue in favor of the liberation of women carry with them assumptions that are equally as limiting as the structures that they are trying to dismantle. The thesis shows that the liberatory arguments of the early modern feminists have unintended consequences. Thus, bringing the liberatory power of the arguments together with their unintended consequences, or their cost, reveals a tension within early modern feminism. The thesis focuses on two feminist thinkers from the seventeenth century France - Francois Poullain de la Barre and Gabrielle Suchon. Both of them have a goal of liberating women, both of them are from more or less the same intellectual milieu, and both of them use newly emerging and sophisticated philosophical tools when making their emancipatory arguments. What is more, both of them produce arguments that require women to give up on some aspects of their womanness. Drawing on the Cartesian method of radical doubt and mind and body dualism, de la barre makes his famous claim that “the mind has no sex”. By separating the mind from the body, de la Barre grants women rational equality, and uses the method of radical doubt to challenge the prejudices and customs that were used to subordinate women. De la Barre uses the strategy of de-sexing whereby the mind is viewed independently of one’s body. Nevertheless, the unintended consequences of de la Barre’s argument is that by prioritizing the mind, he renders the female bodies as philosophically irrelevant. What is more, de la Barre does not grant true rational equality, but he wants women to conform to a male-coded rationality. Drawing on the theological ideas, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism, Gabrielle Suchon proposes the creation of a civil institution of celibacy, or a neutral life. Suchon acknowledges that the existing institutions of marriage and convent are deeply unequal and impossible to reform. Therefore, she proposes the institution of celibacy as a third option. By leading a neutral life, women would acquire freedom, knowledge, and authority. The strategy that Suchon uses is de-sexualization, whereby women must refrain from the sexual relations with men in order to acquire social and political equality. The unintended consequence of Suchon’s argument is that freedom and equality are only available for women if they abstain from the heterosexual relations and the embodied experiences.