Girls’ bodily vulnerability in public space blocks their self-assertion where boys gain sovereignty.

Evidence

The girl today can certainly go out alone, stroll in the Tuileries; but I have already said how hostile the street is: eyes everywhere, hands waiting; if she wanders absentmindedly, her thoughts elsewhere, if she lights a cigarette in a café, if she goes to the cinema alone, an unpleasant incident can quickly occur; she must inspire respect by the way she dresses and behaves: this concern rivets her to the ground and to self. “Her wings are clipped.” … At eighteen, T. E. Lawrence went on a grand tour through France by bicycle; a young girl would never be permitted to take on such an adventure: still less would it be possible for her to take off on foot for a half-desert and dangerous country as Lawrence did. Yet such experiences have an inestimable impact: this is how an individual in the headiness of freedom and discovery learns to look at the entire world as his fief. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1950

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Rebecca Solnit on walking and male spatial entitlement; also echoes #MeToo-era sidewalk harassment analysis. — connects to: Forbidding girls spatial exploits instills a felt sense of inferiority — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 697; Girls’ adolescent revolt is symbolic and self-restricting, never effective like boys’ — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 899; Forbidden physical violence denies girls the capacity to affirm and shape the world — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 836 (+1 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘The geography of ambition’ — how the threat of street harassment differentially shapes who can see the world as their fief, from Lawrence’s bicycle tour to modern mobility.

Broader Connections

• Girls learn to be positioned in space rather than to constitute it #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 671