Man’s attempt to possess woman reverses into his own entrapment in the flesh

Evidence

It is made objective in the woman, who is called fickle and treacherous because her body destines her to man in general and not to a particular man. Her betrayal is even more perfidious: it is she who turns the lover into a prey. Only a body can touch another body; the male masters the desired flesh only by becoming flesh himself; Eve is given to Adam for him to accomplish his transcendence in her, and she draws him into the night of immanence; the mother forges the obscure wrapping for her son from which he now wants to escape, while the mistress encloses him in this opaque clay through the vertigo of pleasure. He wanted to possess: but here he is, possessed himself. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 354

Categorization

• XREF: The reversal from possessor to possessed echoes Sartre’s sadomasochistic circle; also anticipates Beauvoir’s later account of the mother-son bond in ‘Woman’s Situation and Character’. — connects to: The male sex organ confronts man with his own imprisoned passivity. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 353; The failure to possess woman drives man into self-alienation. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 355; Man projects his own unattainable interiority onto woman as mirror and Other — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 401 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Grounds the immanence/transcendence distinction in concrete carnal experience.

Broader Connections

• The slimy reverses possession so that the For-itself is possessed #corroborates (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1402
• The failure to possess woman drives man into self-alienation. #complicates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 355
• Female possession of the body makes penetration feel like dispossession. #corroborates (0.82)
• Man projects his own unattainable interiority onto woman as mirror and Other #qualifies (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 401