Men’s self-deception in paid erotic transactions is structurally easier than women’s

Evidence

As for taking on a lover by supporting him or helping him out, as men often take on a mistress, it is possible only for wealthy women. There are some for whom this deal works: by paying the male, they make an instrument of him, permitting them to use him with disdainful abandon. But women must usually be older to dissociate eroticism from sentiment so crudely, because in feminine adolescence this connection is, as we have seen, so deep. There are also many men who never accept this division between flesh and consciousness. For even more reasons, the majority of women will refuse to consider it. Besides, there is an element of deception they are more aware of than men: the paying client is an instrument as well, used by the partner as a livelihood. Virile arrogance hides the ambiguities of the erotic drama from the male: he spontaneously lies to himself; the woman is more easily humiliated, more susceptible, and also more lucid; she will succeed in blinding herself only at the price of a more cunning bad faith. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1925

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Beauvoir’s treatment of bad faith and the erotic drama of the mistress in earlier chapters.