Exploiting femininity to the extreme can paradoxically grant women near-masculine independence

Evidence

In this way, woman succeeds in acquiring a certain independence. Giving herself to many men, she belongs to none definitively; the money she accumulates, the name she “launches” as one launches a product, ensure her economic autonomy. The freest women in ancient Greece were neither matrons nor common prostitutes but hetaeras. Renaissance courtesans and Japanese geishas enjoy an infinitely greater freedom than their contemporaries. In France, the woman who seems to be the most virile and independent is perhaps Ninon de Lenclos. Paradoxically, those women who exploit their femininity to the extreme create a situation for themselves nearly equal to that of a man; moving from this sex that delivers them to men as objects, they become subjects. They not only earn their living like men but also live in nearly exclusively masculine company; free in their mores and speech, they can rise to the rarest intellectual freedom—like Ninon de Lenclos. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1684

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Beauvoir’s core immanence/transcendence apparatus and to her later discussion of how women can only achieve transcendence within patriarchal structures — parallels the domestic/compliment economy critiques in later feminist theory. — connects to: Individual women transcend their condition only when granted masculine possibilities by chance — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 227; Women’s economic dependence makes them define themselves through men’s desires. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 298; Exalting feminine intuition instead of reason damaged the feminist cause (+9 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes the hetaera category contrastively: hetaera independence is economic autonomy through exploiting the passive feminine role, not genuine transcendence.