 Autonomy is usually understood by feminist writers in the same way that it is understood within moral psychology generally, namely, as self-government or self-direction: being autonomous is acting on motives, reasons, or values that are one’s own. Early feminist literature regarded the notion of autonomy with suspicion because it was thought to promote unattractive “masculinist” ideals of personhood; that is, it was thought to presuppose a conception of the person as “atomistic”, as ideally self-sufficient, as operating in a vacuum unaffected by social relationships, or as an abstract reasoner stripped of distorting influences such as emotions. Recently feminists have sought to rehabilitate the notion of autonomy. Some have argued that articulating the conditions of autonomous choice is essential to understanding gender oppression and related concepts such as objectification. The challenge facing feminist theorists therefore is to reconceptualize autonomy from a feminist perspective. The term “relational autonomy” is often used to refer to feminist reconceptualizations of autonomy to contrast them with notions of autonomy that are thought to presuppose atomistic conceptions of the self.