Male judgment at first sexual encounter shapes lasting female self-worth

Evidence

Even if they are unfamiliar with these obsessions, they are terrified by the idea that certain regions of their bodies that did not exist for them or for anyone, that absolutely did not exist, will suddenly be seen. Will this unknown figure that the young girl must assume as her own provoke disgust? Indifference? Irony? She can only submit to male judgment: the die is cast. This is why man’s attitude will have such deep resonance. His ardor and tenderness can give woman a confidence in herself that will stand up to every rejection: until she is eighty years old, she will believe she is this flower, this exotic bird that made man’s desire bloom one night. On the contrary, if the lover or husband is clumsy, he will arouse an inferiority complex in her that is sometimes compounded by long-lasting neuroses; and she will hold a grudge that will be expressed in a stubborn frigidity. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 962

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Sartre’s the Look and the Other; the eroticized male gaze as existential objectification of the woman. — connects to: Seeing male dominance, not genital difference, alters a girl’s self-consciousness — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 698; Male violence against women partly stems from resentment of their own bodily arousal — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 609
• ADDENDUM: The male gaze/evaluation dynamic parallels the cross-cultural moral panic and judgment dynamics in ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — the body judged as spectacle.

Broader Connections

• Male violence against women partly stems from resentment of their own bodily arousal #corroborates (0.72) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 609