Abstract: This essay evaluates Toril Moi’s arguments for abandoning the concept of gender for feminist theory and replacing it with the concept of lived body derived from existential phenomenology. It agrees with Moi that lived body is a better concept than gender as a category theorizing subjectivity. However, it argues that we need to retain and reposition a concept of gender for theorizing social structure. This essay serves as a theoretical introduction to some of the concepts applied in the succeeding essays.

Keywords: Toril Moi, gender, lived body, social structure, existential phenomenology, feminism,