Learning the truth of sex transforms the child into another being marked by shame

Evidence

One night later I heard take place what I had thought was impossible, and, yes, I was ashamed, I was ashamed of my parents. All of this made of me another being. I went through horrible moral suffering. I considered myself a deeply depraved creature because I was now aware of these things. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 728

Categorization

• XREF: Beauvoir’s own preface here is a concrete existentialist case: knowledge rewrites self-understanding, echoing the Sartrean idea that consciousness constitutes the self rather than merely registering facts. — connects to: Reading The Second Sex caused concrete life transformations in ordinary women — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 886; Laughter at genitals masks shame over their involuntary passivity.; Children fear future bodily change as a threat to their own identity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 729 (+6 more)
• SEED: Angled article: the childhood sex-education ‘lie’ as a formative shattering of the parental imago — how a single overheard night rewrote a child’s moral self.

Broader Connections

• Shame first reveals one’s factical body because the Other’s look falls on embodiment #expands (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 97
• Repressing childhood sexuality produces neuroses more harmful than sexual play itself #exemplifies (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1977
• Puberty’s bodily changes alienate the girl from herself and the world #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 835