Male and female eroticism are experienced as transcendence versus alienated immanence respectively.

Evidence

The young man is proud of his sexual propensities because he assumes his virility joyfully; sexual desire is aggressive and prehensile for him; there is an affirmation of his subjectivity and transcendence in it; he boasts of it to his friends; his sex organ is for him a disturbance he takes pride in; the drive that sends him toward the female is of the same nature as that which throws him toward the world, and so he recognizes himself in it. On the contrary, the girl’s sexual life has always been hidden; when her eroticism is transformed and invades her whole flesh, the mystery becomes agonizing: she undergoes the disturbance as a shameful illness; it is not active: it is a state, and even in imagination she cannot get rid of it by any autonomous decision; she does not dream of taking, pressing, violating: she is wait and appeal; she feels dependent; she feels herself at risk in her alienated flesh. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 775

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concretely instantiates Beauvoir’s immanence/transcendence apparatus: male desire affirms subjectivity and transcendence while female desire is endured as a passive state.
• XREF: This is the core existentialist-feminist contrast of the book, standing against Sartre’s account of desire in Being and Nothingness. — connects to: Male sexuality is mediated and individualizing while female sexuality is immediate and species-bound. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 95; Female religiosity and eroticism both make the self an object for a transcendent being — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 705; Male sexuality integrates with individual transcendence while female sexuality does not — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 97 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Male sexuality integrates with individual transcendence while female sexuality does not #corroborates (0.95) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 97
• Female sexual arousal involves self-alienation whereas male desire remains localized and self-conscious #corroborates (0.90) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 987
• Female desire is experienced as viscous passivity versus male predatory impetuosity. #corroborates (0.85)
• Feminine eroticism involves becoming an object to snare another #exemplifies (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 845
• Sexual experiences can be rewarding yet felt from radically different gendered perspectives #expands (0.82)
• Male transcendence is fleeting while the female is chronically alienated by gestation #qualifies (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 94