Men are judged by actuality while women are loved for unrealized possibility.

Evidence

Except for Claudel, who finds a perfect witness in God, all the writers we have considered expect, in Malraux’s words, woman to cherish in them this “incomparable monster” known to themselves alone. In collaboration or combat, men come up against each other in their generality. Montherlant, for his peers, is a writer, Lawrence a doctrinaire, Breton a leader of a school, Stendhal a diplomat or a man of wit; it is women who reveal in one a magnificent and cruel prince, in another a disturbing animal, in still another a god or a sun or a being “black and cold … like a man struck by lightning, lying at the feet of the Sphinx,” and in the other a seducer, a charmer, a lover. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 621 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Men’s economic privilege, their social value, the prestige of marriage, the usefulness of masculine support—all these encourage women to ardently want to please men. They are on the whole still in a state of serfdom. It follows that woman knows and chooses herself not as she exists for herself but as man defines her. She thus has to be described first as men dream of her since her being-for-men is one of the essential factors of her concrete condition. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 298 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Men turn to women to be recognized in their singular exceptionality — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 621; Male authority in love is satiable while female devotion is insatiable; Women’s economic dependence makes them define themselves through men’s desires. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 298

Broader Connections

• Men turn to women to be recognized in their singular exceptionality #corroborates (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 621
• Women’s economic dependence makes them define themselves through men’s desires. #expands (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 298
• Male authority in love is satiable while female devotion is insatiable #complicates (0.75)