Menopause distress is produced by anxious consciousness, not the body

Evidence

The crisis is felt much less acutely by women who have not essentially staked everything on their femininity; those who work hard—in their home or outside—are relieved when their menstrual servitude ends; peasants and workers’ wives who are constantly threatened with new pregnancies are happy when, finally, that risk no longer exists. In this situation as in many others, women’s disorders come less from the body itself than from their anxious consciousness of it. The moral drama usually begins before the onset of the physiological phenomena, and it does not end until long after they have been eliminated. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1708

Categorization

• XREF: Classic Beauvoir existentialism — the body as ‘situation’ interpreted through consciousness — echoing the earlier chapters’ rejection of biological determinism. — connects to: Anxiety is not pathological but a mood that reveals the world as strange. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 248; Menopausal anxiety manifests as jealousy and persecution fantasies as defense against a finished life. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1718; Menopause brings repressed erotic fantasy that surfaces as neurotic behavior