Future relations between the sexes will exceed what present imagination can conceive

Evidence

Let us beware lest our lack of imagination impoverish the future; the future is only an abstraction for us; each of us secretly laments the absence in it of what was; but tomorrow’s humankind will live the future in its flesh and in its freedom; that future will be its present, and humankind will in turn prefer it; new carnal and affective relations of which we cannot conceive will be born between the sexes: friendships, rivalries, complicities, chaste or sexual companionships that past centuries would not have dreamed of are already appearing. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1981

Categorization

• XREF: Anticipates later feminist utopian and queer theorizing about new relational forms; echoes the affirmative futurity dimension absent from much first-wave existentialist pessimism.
• DEEPTHINKING: Not top-5% density; this is a well-made argument but not paradigm-shifting.