Male uselessness contains the germ of individual independence

Evidence

Aside from the fleeting coitus, the male’s life is useless, gratuitous: next to the diligence of worker females, the laziness of drones is a privilege worth noting. But this privilege is outrageous; the male often pays with his life for this uselessness that contains the germ of independence. A species that enslaves the female punishes the male attempting to escape: it eliminates him brutally. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 92

Categorization

• DEFINE: The male’s ‘gratuitous’ existence prefigures the freedom/transcendence Beauvoir will later locate in the masculine project.
• XREF: connects to: In lower animals only the male gains individual existence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 92; Being useless only appears backward within a paradoxical social world — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 24; Individuality is simultaneously a residue escaping the system and a wound the system inflicts

Broader Connections

• Individuality is simultaneously a residue escaping the system and a wound the system inflicts #expands (0.85)
• Being useless only appears backward within a paradoxical social world #complicates (0.80) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 24