Male transcendence is fleeting while the female is chronically alienated by gestation

Evidence

But the fundamental difference between male and female mammals is that in the same quick instant, the sperm, by which the male’s life transcends into another, becomes foreign to it and is separated from its body; thus the male, at the very moment it goes beyond its individuality, encloses itself once again in it. By contrast, the ovum began to separate itself from the female when, ripe, it released itself from the follicle to fall into the oviduct; penetrated by a foreign gamete, it implants itself in the uterus: first violated, the female is then alienated; she carries the fetus in her womb for varying stages of maturation depending on the species: the guinea pig is born almost adult; the dog close to a fetal state; inhabited by another who is nourished by her substance, the female is both herself and other than herself during the whole gestation period; after delivery, she feeds the newborn with milk from her breasts. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 94

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the biological meaning of transcendence vs. immanence that anchors the whole analysis.
• XREF: Directly connects to Sartre’s pour-soi/en-soi and to Hegel’s master-slave dialectic which Beauvoir will revisit. — connects to: Pregnancy collapses the subject-object opposition that normally drives transcendence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1449; Male sexuality integrates with individual transcendence while female sexuality does not — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 97; Individual women transcend their condition only when granted masculine possibilities by chance — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 227 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Pregnancy collapses the subject-object opposition that normally drives transcendence #expands (0.92) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1449
• Male sexuality integrates with individual transcendence while female sexuality does not #expands (0.88) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 97
• Individual women transcend their condition only when granted masculine possibilities by chance #qualifies (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 227
• Alienation in reproduction paradoxically reveals consciousness-body union for women #complicates (0.82) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 110
• Male desire is fleeting while women become emotionally bound after love #exemplifies (0.78)