Feeling womanly means feeling like a desirable object, making erotomania a professional derangement

Evidence

These illusions can give rise to real derangement; Clérambault had good reason to consider erotomania “a kind of professional derangement”; to feel like a woman is to feel like a desirable object, to believe oneself desired and loved. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1825

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A compressed and startling link: being a woman constitutively involves being a desirable object, so the derangement of believing oneself desired is not a deviation but the pathology of the normal condition — reverses assumptions about erotomania as aberration.
• XREF: Directly extends the book’s central claim of woman-as-Other and the body-for-others theme; resonates with later feminist work on the male gaze (Mulvey). — connects to: Woman’s aging shame stems from being an object for man’s mediation — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1709
• SHARE: Share with anyone working in clinical psych or continental feminism — the idea that erotomania is the pathology of normal femininity is sharp enough to spark debate.

Broader Connections

• Woman’s aging shame stems from being an object for man’s mediation #expands (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1709