Man elevates woman to personhood precisely because she remains his feared other

Evidence

The source of these terrors is that in the Other, beyond any annexation, alterity remains. In patriarchal societies, woman kept many of the disquieting virtues she held in primitive societies. That explains why she is never left to Nature, why she is surrounded by taboos, purified by rites, and placed under the control of priests; man is taught never to approach her in her original nudity, but through ceremonies and sacraments that wrest her from the earth and flesh and metamorphose her into a human creature: thus the magic she possesses is channeled as lightning has been since the invention of lightning rods and electric power plants. … It is even possible to use her in the group’s interests: this is another phase of the oscillatory movement defining man’s relationship to his female. He loves her because she is his, he fears her because she remains other; but it is as the feared other that he seeks to make her most deeply his: this is what will lead him to raise her to the dignity of a person and to recognize her as his peer. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 366

Categorization

• XREF: This oscillatory love-fear dialectic of the Other echoes Sartre’s Being and Nothingness discussion of the look and the Other, and anticipates the whole of Beauvoir’s argument about woman as simultaneously valued and subjugated. — connects to: Man feminizes the ideal Other because woman is the tangible figure of alterity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 383; Man projects his own unattainable interiority onto woman as mirror and Other — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 401; Man’s desire to conquer woman is really a pursuit of her freedom itself. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 408 (+6 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes a core sense of the ‘Other’: one whose alterity resists full annexation, which is why woman is never left to Nature but tamed through rites and ceremonies.

Broader Connections

• Man defines woman not in herself but in relation to himself #corroborates (0.90) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 13
• Woman’s contradictory image stems from being man’s inessential Other #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413
• Woman’s role is to be the mediating consciousness through which man discovers himself #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614
• Male love requires woman as an object who remains unconscious of herself #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614
• A man’s enduring love can transform woman’s sexual submission into transcendence #qualifies (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1859
• Both sexes implicitly center perspective on the male, making woman the object #complicates (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 681