Woman’s infantilization results from never having emerged as a subject before others

Evidence

The woman herself recognizes that the universe as a whole is masculine; it is men who have shaped it and ruled it and who still today dominate it; as for her, she does not consider herself responsible for it; it is understood that she is inferior and dependent; she has not learned the lessons of violence, she has never emerged as a subject in front of other members of the group; enclosed in her flesh, in her home, she grasps herself as passive opposite to these human-faced gods who set goals and standards. In this sense there is truth in the saying that condemns her to remaining “an eternal child”; it has also been said of workers, black slaves, and colonized natives that they were “big children” as long as they were not threatening; that meant they had to accept without argument the truths and laws that other men gave them. Woman’s lot is obedience and respect. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1742

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Fanon’s and postcolonial accounts of the colonized as ‘big children’ — parallels the master-slave dynamic extending past the group identified in The Second Sex part I. — connects to: Women were never a caste but the absolute Other without reciprocity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 319; Myth creation requires subject status women have never possessed — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 321; Girls seem precocious because the adult female stage itself remains more infantile — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 696 (+6 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the foundational mechanism by which woman is constituted as Other: never emerging as subject before the group.

Broader Connections

• Social norms constitute the subject rather than merely constraining her #corroborates (0.85)
• Marginalized position pushes women to seek self-realization in imagination rather than action #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1942
• Women’s isolation from each other blocks recognition that their subjectivity struggles are shared #expands (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 73
• Women’s historical perception as non-agentic shapes expectations about their success #corroborates (0.80)
• Selfhood is formed socially through others from earliest infancy #expands (0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 737
• Woman’s contradictory image stems from being man’s inessential Other #contradicts (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413