Woman’s defining situation is being forced to assume herself as Other

Evidence

But what singularly defines the situation of woman is that being, like all humans, an autonomous freedom, she discovers and chooses herself in a world where men force her to assume herself as Other: an attempt is made to freeze her as an object and doom her to immanence, since her transcendence will be forever transcended by another essential and sovereign consciousness. Woman’s drama lies in this conflict between the fundamental claim of every subject, which always posits itself as essential, and the demands of a situation that constitutes her as inessential. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 64

Categorization

• DEFINE: The book’s thesis in miniature: woman as the Other, frozen into immanence, her transcendence transcended by an essential masculine consciousness.
• XREF: The Other-relation derives from Hegel’s master-slave dialectic but Beauvoir genders and sharpens it — key connection point for situating Beauvoir in the Continental tradition. — connects to: The famous becoming-woman sentence concerns socially determined woman, not individuals — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 35; Man defines woman not in herself but in relation to himself — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 13; Women’s unique subordination rests on their failing to contest the One’s claim — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 55 (+16 more)

Broader Connections

• Woman’s contradictory image stems from being man’s inessential Other #corroborates (0.95) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413
• A real woman is defined by accepting herself as Other, not by biology #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 668
• The Other is constituted by negation as the self which is not myself #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 675
• Domestic activity erases woman’s selfhood by displacing her identity #exemplifies (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1235