Homosexuality is judged by authenticity, not by its normality.

Evidence

The individual’s history is not an inevitable progression: at every step, the past is grasped anew by a new choice, and the “normality” of the choice confers no privileged value on it: it must be judged by its authenticity. Homosexuality can be a way for woman to flee her condition or a way to assume it. Psychoanalysts’ great error, through moralizing conformity, is that they never envisage it as anything but an inauthentic attitude. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1034

Categorization

• DEFINE: Beauvoir’s authenticity criterion — a choice’s value lies in authenticity, not statistical or psychoanalytic normality.
• XREF: The ‘project’ and ‘situation’ framing is pure Sartrean existentialism; connects to the book’s introduction on the perspective of the Other. — connects to: Criticism must be judged by objective validity, not the critic’s identity. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 460; Authenticity is judged by others against demographic norms, not by inner voice — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 272
• DEEPTHINKING: The reframing of homosexuality as a choice to be judged by authenticity rather than developmental completion is a dense, paradigm-shifting moment central to Beauvoir’s whole method.

Broader Connections

• Criticism must be judged by objective validity, not the critic’s identity. #expands (0.82) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 460