Women’s otherness lacks the historical before that enables other groups to rebel

Evidence

Th e Second Sex may be read as driven by a simple question: Why don’t women rebel? Or, in Beauvoir’s words, “Why is it that women do not dispute male sovereignty? … Whence comes this submission … of women” (SS, xviv)? Insofar as it concerns the matter of exploitation, women, like other dominated groups, are marked as the Other. When Beauvoir writes, “thus humanity is male and man defi nes woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being… . She is defi ned and diff erentiated with reference to man … she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential” (SS, viii), she could easily have substituted markers of race for man and woman. Th e sentence could read, “thus humanity is white and white people defi ne native people, or black people, not in themselves but as relative to them.” Beauvoir herself suggests such possibilities when she compares the situation of women to that of the slave. Th is substitutability accounts for some of the impact of Th e Second Sex. Its category of the Other resonates beyond the confi nes of the text. Beauvoir insists, however, that there is a radical diff erence between the otherness of women and the otherness ascribed to other oppressed groups. Other oppressed groups, remembering the moment when they were transformed from sovereign subjects into objects to be used by others, see their exploitation as a historical injustice that must and can be opposed. Appealing to their memory of life before their transformation, they call to each other in solidarity and rebel. Th ey follow the script of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic. No such script exists for women. Th ere seems to be no “before,” no moment when women’s subjectivity was stolen from them. In this, women’s otherness is more akin to that of Hindu untouchables than to that of the colonized or enslaved. It appears to be ahistorical— a matter of natural law or divine ordination. Believing in the inevitability of their otherness, women exist in a mystifi ed condition. As mystifi ed, they accept the “fact” of their passivity, weakness, and need for male protection. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 58

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Beauvoir’s distinctive claim that women’s otherness differs radically from colonized or enslaved groups’ otherness for lack of a historical ‘before’.
• XREF: Connects to the Hegelian master-slave dialectic as used by Beauvoir, and to Fanon’s analysis of the colonized’s historical memory. — connects to: Women’s class loyalties fragment them more than shared sex unites them. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 277; To act upon history one must first be anchored in society, which subjugates women. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 289; Women are permitted destructive revolt but forbidden constructive participation. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 289 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Oppressed groups become Subjects by saying ‘we,’ which women have failed to do. #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 56
• Exclusion from history makes women mistrust the future and defend the status quo #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1743
• Historical insignificance caused women’s inferiority, not the reverse. #complicates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 289
• Women’s isolation from each other blocks recognition that their subjectivity struggles are shared #expands (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 73
• Female passivity is socially imposed, not biologically determined, and self-reinforces through a vicious circle #qualifies (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 691