Men assign women’s status to serve their own projects, not women’s interest
Evidence
Men always held woman’s lot in their hands; and they did not decide on it based on her interest; it is their own projects, fears, and needs that counted. When they revered the Mother Goddess, it is because Nature frightened them, and as soon as the bronze tool enabled them to assert themselves against Nature, they instituted patriarchy; henceforth it was the family-state conflict that has defined woman’s status; it is the attitude of the Christian before God, the world, and his own flesh that is reflected in the condition he assigned to her; what was called the querelle des femmes in the Middle Ages was a quarrel between clergy and laity about marriage and celibacy; it is the social regime founded on private property that brought about the married woman’s wardship, and it is the technical revolution realized by men that enfranchised today’s women. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 288
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: This is the core causal thesis of the entire book — every historical institution (mother goddess worship, patriarchy, Christian morality, the querelle des femmes, private property wardship, the technical revolution) is reframed as a male project, not a response to women’s needs.
- XREF: The family-state conflict maps onto the reader’s earlier material on women’s status being determined by state/private tensions (Lex Oppia, dress moral panics). — connects to: Muslim women’s subordination serves male elite interests, not Quranic doctrine; The same professional relationship is labeled networking for men but sexualized for women — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 699; Women’s tech accomplishments get credited to their male associates regardless of romantic reality — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 701 (+1 more)
- ADDENDUM: Directly supports and extends the Complaints About Immodesty article’s thesis that dress panics are class/identity politics projected by dominant men, not responses to women’s actual interests.
Broader Connections
- Muslim women’s subordination serves male elite interests, not Quranic doctrine
#exemplifies(0.85)