Species reproduction increasingly alienates the female as individuality increases

Evidence

But it is true that in both these active operations—maintenance and creation—the synthesis of becoming is not realized in the same way. Maintaining means denying the dispersion of instants, thereby affirming continuity in the course of their outpouring; creating means exploding an irreducible and separate present within a temporal unity, and it is also true that for the female it is the continuity of life that seeks to realize itself in spite of separation, while separation into new and individualized forces is brought about by male initiative; he can affirm himself in his autonomy; he integrates the specific energy into his own life; by contrast, female individuality is fought by the interest of the species; she seems possessed by outside forces: alienated. This explains why sexual opposition increases rather than abates when the individuality of organisms asserts itself. The male finds more and more ways to use the forces of which he is master; the female feels her subjugation more and more; the conflict between her own interests and those of the generating forces that inhabit her exasperates her. Giving birth for cows and mares is far more painful and dangerous than for female mice and rabbits. Woman, the most individualized of females, is also the most fragile, the one who experiences her destiny the most dramatically and who distinguishes herself the most significantly from her male. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 96

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces alienation as a species-level phenomenon: the female is ‘possessed by outside forces’ in a way the male is not.
• DEEPTHINKING: The cascade from maintenance/creation opposition through female alienation to the dramatic destiny of the most individualized female is a dense, paradigm-founding argument: it grounds the existentialist-feminist concept of woman’s body-as-destiny in biology without determinism.
• XREF: Extends Sartrean bad faith and alienation concepts into the biological realm; the ‘possessed by outside forces’ phrasing anticipates her later ‘body as situation’ argument. — connects to: Female reproductive biology subordinates individual life to species demands — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 97; Biological individuality increases as species evolve upward; Alienation in reproduction paradoxically reveals consciousness-body union for women — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 110 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Females uniquely experience their own bodies as alienated otherness #expands (0.92) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 110
• Alienation in reproduction paradoxically reveals consciousness-body union for women #expands (0.90) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 110