Femininity is an artificial, inculcated product rather than a natural instinct
Evidence
The great misunderstanding upon which this system of interpretation rests is to hold that it is natural for the human female to make a feminine woman of herself: being a heterosexual or even a mother is not enough to realize this ideal; the “real woman” is an artificial product that civilization produces the way eunuchs were produced in the past; these supposed “instincts” of coquetry or docility are inculcated in her just as phallic pride is for man; he does not always accept his virile vocation; she has good reasons to accept even less docilely the vocation assigned to her. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1037
Categorization
- XREF: Core existentialist-feminist thesis resonating with Judith Butler’s gender performativity decades later; also connects to the reader’s foundational Continental framing. — connects to: Female virtue is the broken form in which exploited nature enters male culture — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 256; Femininity is a negative imprint of masculine domination, not a natural essence — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 110; Desiring woman as transfigured nature drives men to make her artificial — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 351 (+17 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: The eunuch comparison and the symmetry between masculine and feminine ‘instincts’ both being inculcated collapses biological essentialism at its root; dense enough to sit with.
- DEFINE: Supplies the definitional core: gender is produced, not given — the ‘real woman’ is a construct like the eunuch was.
Broader Connections
- Gender is a social power structure rather than a genetic trait.
#corroborates(0.90) - Feminine presentation is coerced self-objectification in disguise
#expands(0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 900 - The desire to provide is not an innate male instinct
#exemplifies(0.85) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 225 - Humans are constituted by their social relations rather than an intrinsic essence
#corroborates(0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2517