ABSTRACT
In the current essay, I introduce Iris Marion Young (1949–2006) as a key figure in the philosophy of sports. Young’s essay “Throwing like a girl” (1980) is a classic, I contend, because of its groundbreaking reflection on the gendered nature of athletic movement. I develop my argument by way of a critical analysis of “Throwing Like a Girl.” In §§ 2 and 3, I argue that Young’s essay is an excellent starting-point for reflection on the bodily and social resistances female athletes experience in sports, due to its sophisticated account of “the three modalities” of female movement by way of which it argues that female athletes live a “life in contradiction” between transcendence (freedom) and immanence (lack of freedom). However, Young’s argument triggers the questions of whether transcendence can ever be achieved, and, if so, how. While Young has identified an important tension between transcendence and immanence, I argue in § 4 that supplementing “Throwing like a Girl” with Young’s conceptual analysis developed in “Five Faces of Oppression” may help us understand in a more sophisticated way which hindrances are on the road to freedom for female athletes.
