Desire, not observed traits, originally discloses sexual being to consciousness.

Evidence

The existent is a sexed body; in its relations with other existents that are also sexed bodies, sexuality is thus always involved; but as the body and sexuality are concrete expressions of existence, it is also from here that their significance can be ascertained: without this perspective, psychoanalysis takes unexplained facts for granted. … Sexuality must not be taken as an irreducible given; the existent possesses a more primary “quest for being”; sexuality is only one of these aspects. … Working the soil and digging a hole are activities as primal as an embrace or coitus: it is an error to see them only as sexual symbols; a hole, slime, a gash, hardness, and wholeness are primary realities; man’s interest in them is not dictated by libido; instead, the libido will be influenced by the way these realities were revealed to him. Man is not fascinated by wholeness because it symbolizes feminine virginity: rather, his love for wholeness makes virginity precious. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 127 (#expands, via linked claim)

As soon as “there is” the body and as soon as “there is” an Other, we react by desire, by Love, and by the derived attitudes which we have mentioned. Our physiological structure only causes the symbolic expression, on the level of absolute contingency, of the fact that we are the permanent possibility of assuming one or the other of these attitudes. Thus we shall be able to say that the For-itself is sexual in its very upsurge in the face of the Other and that through it sexuality comes into the world. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1003 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Whatever I may happen to desire, I shall feel pleasure in obtaining it; but as a rule the pleasure is due to the desire, not the desire to the pleasure. — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2231 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Sexuality expresses an underlying quest for being rather than grounding it. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 127; Desire is a chosen mode of consciousness, not a passive impingement — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 979; Sexuality is an ontological structure of the For-itself, not a physiological given — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1003 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Sexuality expresses an underlying quest for being rather than grounding it. #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 127
• Sexuality is an ontological structure of the For-itself, not a physiological given #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1003
• Pleasure follows from desire rather than desire being caused by pleasure #corroborates (0.75) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2231
• Desire is a chosen mode of consciousness, not a passive impingement #complicates (0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 979
• Desire is consciousness troubled by its own inapprehensible facticity #expands (0.70)
• Desire proves human reality is constituted as a lack #expands (0.70) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 354