Sexual passion does not depend on female subordination or inequality

Evidence

It is absurd to contend that orgies, vice, ecstasy, and passion would become impossible if man and woman were concretely peers; the contradictions opposing flesh to spirit, instant to time, the vertigo of immanence to the appeal of transcendence, the absolute of pleasure to the nothingness of oblivion will never disappear; tension, suffering, joy, and the failure and triumph of existence will always be materialized in sexuality. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1981

Categorization

• DEFINE: Recapitulates the core immanence/transcendence dichotomy and applies it as the permanent substrate of erotic experience.
• XREF: connects to: The virgin-desire myth serves male domination, not biological fact — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 948; Uninstitutionalized relationships between women allow fuller self-exposure than heterosexual ones — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1076