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Iris Marion Young was a fighter for justice and against oppression. A strong commitment, a commitment there as long as any of us had known her, fueled her writing and her activism. Her feminism was part of that commitment to justice. Her attention and sensitivity to the oppression of others was informed by an acute eye to the ways she herself--and all women--have to face the threats of economic exploitation, social marginalization, powerlessness, cultural hegemony, and systematic violence.
In the early essay "Throwing Like a Girl" Young used her own experience as a fulcrum to pry out an understanding of the inhibitions that women internalize. Her entire corpus sprouted from the synergistic interaction of her apprehension of the experience of herself and others, her philosophical background and understanding, and her keen analytic insight. And in her recent work "Menstrual Meditations" (2005), she returned to the powerful, image-laden technique of "Throwing Like a Girl," both to point out the implications of hiding one's menstrual period and to craft alternate ideals for one's body in the world.
Young's perspective and insight were often paradigm shifting. Early on in her work, for example, she criticized "dual systems theory" (in which two...