The central question of Simone de Beauvoir’s
famous work, The Second Sex asks,
“What is Woman?”. The shrewd philosopher
concludes that woman is the other, in a world where man is the ideal.
De Beauvoir explains that any group which
sees itself as “us” must define itself by identifying it’s opposite,
“them”. She states, “…no group ever sets
itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other against itself.”[1] For example, one cannot identify which
baseball players are on the home team, without simultaneously distinguishing
who is on the away team. This is the way in which woman was “othered” by man.
De Beauvoir continues that at some point in
human history, far beyond memory, it was decided that there was an absolute
form of humanity, and it was male. Thus,
when male community members identified themselves as the ideal, the One, the
self of humanity, they at once distinguished female community members as
deviations or modifications to that ideal; the inessential aspects of humanity.
As a result, woman is only defined in
relation to man- never as an independent self.
de Beauvoir states that a woman is seen to have contingent value as she
serves as a sex partner for an man. However, she is not valued (or even
commonly described) as a free and independent being. This perspective has permeated
even the very words we use to describe the two sexes. Where there is a man,
there is also a woman. Where there is
male, there is also female—and thus
each feminine prefix represents a modification to the absolute male
characteristics of ‘human’. Female becomes nothing more than a contingent
imperfection of male.
de Beauvoir argues if man and woman were both
placed on a spectrum, man would occupy the positive pole as well as the neutral
space, while woman occupies only the negative pole. de Beauvoir says this can
be proven with the simple example of ‘mankind’ being used to refer to both men
and women. However, it is my belief that this fundamental discrimination is not
only present, but ubiquitous throughout society. For example, when some says, “you hit like a girl” there is a
distinctly negative connotation attached to the statement. We have been
conditioned to understand that to hit like a girl, is to hit poorly. Meanwhile,
“you hit like a boy” does not even exist as an identifiable phrase. When the
ball is hit successfully, we are told simply, “well done” because it is assumed
that to hit well, is to hit like a man. Thus femininity becomes a deficiency,
an inability, or a hindrance.
Femininity is referred to as a hindrance
nowhere more so, than in reference to the female body. The average woman
regularly hears phrases such as, “you are
being unreasonable because you have your period”, or “a woman has too many hormones to be in politics” or perhaps the
more general, “you will never understand
because you are a woman.” Woman is
told that the physical components of her body inescapably prevent her from
attaining the capabilities available to man. Regardless of the phrase chosen,
the message is always the same: Your physical existence as a female, is an
obstacle to perfection.
This leads de Beauvoir to ask, why does woman
accept that she is fundamentally lacking in comparison to man? Why has she
agreed that her ‘other-ness’ is absolute? de Beauvoir theorizes that the answer
rests in memory.
There was no historical occurrence in which
the women of the world became the ‘others’.
Women were never independent subjects in humanity, who suddenly became
overpowered by men and were thus objectified. Rather, they simply became the
objects of humanity at the very moment men proclaimed themselves the subjects.
Thus, there is neither a female memory of transitioning into the other, nor a
recollection of a different way of life before they became the deviants. de
Beauvoir claims that the key to such absolute conditioning of woman, exists as this
lack of a recollectable change that
moved women into oppression. In the eyes of the woman, society is not unfair
because this is how it has always been. As a result, women have been lead to
believe that their subordination is simply their natural condition, and
therefore “beyond the possibility of change”.[2]
de Beauvoir concludes that this belief not
only discourages female solidarity, but suppresses even the desire to bring
about a change for women.
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