Woman’s otherness lets her serve as the privileged judge of men’s value

Evidence

There is another function that man willingly entrusts to woman: being the purpose behind men’s activities and the source of their decisions, she is also the judge of values. She is revealed as a privileged judge. Man dreams of an Other not only to possess her but also to be validated by her; to be validated by men who are his peers entails constant tension on his part: that is why he wants an outside view conferring absolute value on his life, on his undertakings, on himself. God’s gaze is hidden, foreign, disquieting: even in periods of faith, only a few mystics felt its intensity. This divine role often devolved on the woman. Close to the man, dominated by him, she does not posit values that are foreign to him: and yet, as she is other, she remains exterior to the world of men and can thus grasp it objectively. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 398

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the analytical mechanism of ‘Other’ as a role that confers objective validation precisely because the woman is exterior yet not alien.
• XREF: Connects to Hegel’s master-slave dialectic and Sartre’s being-for-others — the desire for external validation that Beauvoir pushes into gendered territory. — connects to: Man feminizes the ideal Other because woman is the tangible figure of alterity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 383; Woman’s disadvantaged position yields a more authentic self-knowledge than man’s. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1015; Woman’s contradictory image stems from being man’s inessential Other — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413

Broader Connections

• Woman’s disadvantaged position yields a more authentic self-knowledge than man’s. #corroborates (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1015
• Woman’s contradictory image stems from being man’s inessential Other #complicates (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413