Beauvoir distinguishes women’s authentic appeal from mere supplication within patriarchal categories

Evidence

Beauvoir claims that “the whole of feminist history has been man-made… . Just as in America there is no Negro problem but rather a white problem … the woman problem has always been a man problem … men created values, mores, religion… . Feminism itself was never an autonomous movement… . When [women] have intervened in the course of world aff airs, it has been in accord with men, in masculine perspectives” (SS, 128–29). Th e point of this observation is to distinguish between an appeal and a supplication. An appeal is grounded in an authentic experience of subjectivity. Absent this experience, women’s demands for change will be framed within the categories of patriarchy. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 79

Categorization

• XREF: The appeal/supplication distinction connects to her earlier ‘appeal’ concept from The Ethics of Ambiguity, quoted at the start of this paragraph — a link worth keeping across the Beauvoir corpus. — connects to: Beauvoir’s positive vision is fraternity between equals, not women’s supremacy — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 15; Genuine feminist emancipation does not reduce love but deepens mutual understanding between equals. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 616; Beauvoir transformed phenomenological thought by exposing its patriarchal biases — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 85 (+1 more)