Male defiance itself provokes women’s counter-defiance in the seduction game.

Evidence

If she has trouble pleasing men, it is because she is not like her little slave sisters, a pure will to please; her desire to seduce may be strong, but it has not penetrated into the marrow of her bones; as soon as she feels awkward, she gets fed up with her servility; she tries to take her revenge by playing the game with masculine weapons: she talks instead of listening, she flaunts clever ideas, unusual feelings; she contradicts her interlocutor instead of going along with him, she tries to outdo him. Mme de Staël cleverly mixed both methods with stunning triumphs: she was almost always irresistible. But defiance, so frequent, for example, among American women, irritates men more than it wins them over; it is men, however, who provoke it by their own defiance; if men were content to love a peer instead of a slave—as indeed some men do who are without either arrogance or an inferiority complex—then women would be far less obsessed with their femininity; they would become more natural and simple and would easily rediscover themselves as women, which, after all, they are. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1922

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the intimacy dialectic of master-slave developed across earlier chapters. — connects to: Women’s seeming illogic masks refusal of a loaded male argumentative game — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1756; Women resist pleasure that feels inflicted or actively engineered by the man. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 988; Female attempts to dominate men are defensive responses to imposed oppression — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1966 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Women resist pleasure that feels inflicted or actively engineered by the man. #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 988
• Female attempts to dominate men are defensive responses to imposed oppression #complicates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1966
• Erotic combat between the sexes is really each person fighting their own repudiated self #contradicts (0.70) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1978