Patriarchy triumphed through men’s biological privilege, not accident or revolution

Evidence

Thus, the triumph of patriarchy was neither an accident nor the result of a violent revolution. From the origins of humanity, their biological privilege enabled men to affirm themselves alone as sovereign subjects; they never abdicated this privilege; they alienated part of their existence in Nature and in Woman; but they won it back afterward; condemned to play the role of the Other, woman was thus condemned to possess no more than precarious power: slave or idol, she was never the one who chose her lot. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 166

Categorization

• DEFINE: Woman’s condition as ‘the Other’ is defined here: someone to whom a role is assigned who never chooses her own lot.
• ADDENDUM: The ‘slave or idol’ oscillation of woman’s precarious power parallels how sacrificial victims in stratified societies were honored and destroyed at once.
• XREF: connects to: Witchcraft trials celebrated male society’s triumph over matriarchal nature; Patriarchal sexual hierarchies persist even in biological theory. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 82; Men invented the feminine-immanence division to preserve masculine privileges — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 157 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Male bonding is how patriarchy confers and preserves male power. #expands (0.85) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 282
• Citizenship functioned historically as an instrument of male domination #expands (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 831
• Women’s oppression derives from family and patrimony, not biological sex #contradicts (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 190