ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some ideas about gender and subjectivity. It considers subjectivity to include both the experience of self— experiences that make up selfhood—and our reflections on this selfhood, all of which affect each other. One of the most common and therefore influential stories about selfhood in our Western culture has been that of the "unitary rational subject". For men, a sense of subjectivity has been centrally connected to a sense of masculinity. Women and selfhood have been described in rather different ways. Although femininity is defined as opposite to masculinity, it has sometimes been construed only as lack or gap and sometimes through its connection to nature. For women and people who, marginalized in Western societies, live lives of multiple realities at a number of different levels, finding a context in which these contradictory and often paradoxical experiences can be validated may be crucial.
