Freedom, Justice & Morality After the War

Poli 119DA 17What is a woman?

Simone de Beauvoir

• 1908-1986• Novelist• Ethicist• Philosopher• Foundational in 2nd & 3rd

wave feminism

3 Waves of Feminism

• First wave: 1848 ~ 1915– Equality before the law: Vote, contract, property,

legal recognition• Second wave: ~1960 ~ 1990– Equality in economy, society, & politics: Jobs, pay,

reproductive rights, representation, rape, image, misogyny, affirmation of womanhood

• Third wave: ~1990 – present– Postmodern critiques of gender as such. Emphasis on

cultural, sexual diversity, queer rights.

Existentialist Vocabulary Fun• The Situation/he practico-inert

– The conditions within which one exists• The outcome of human effort, projects• Something the individual had nothing to do with creating. As far as

the individual is concerned, the situation is arbitrary, absurd.• Project

– A series of actions designed to change the situation in which one finds one’s self in order to create a new situation.

– An exercise of freedom• Transcendence

– To recognize oneself as standing out from (existing) the situation• The individual is not a part of the practico-inert, but its judge and

participant

Existentialist Vocabulary Fun• Authenticity– To think and act in a way that acknowledges your own

absolute freedom (not unlimited freedom) and that of all other humans.

• Immanence– To exist within, as part of, rather than above and

apart from• en-soi– “in itself,” as an object or thing

• por-soi– “for itself,” as a consciousness

What is a woman?

• The core question of the text– Don’t lose sight of this

• Tota mulier in utero (xviv)• But “woman” is not a biological category– Become/stay a woman• It is a thing that a female human may or may not be

• Is it a matter of some kind of essence?– No: “Science regards any characteristic as a

reaction dependent in part upon a situation.” (xx)

The Situation

• The conditions within which one exists– The practico-inert• The outcome of human effort, projects• Something the individual had nothing to do with

creating. As far as the individual is concerned, the situation is arbitrary, absurd.

Aren’t we all really the same?

• If it’s all a matter of essentially arbitrary conditions, perhaps “woman” is a meaningless category, a label arbitrary applied to certain human beings. Perhaps there are no women, only humans? Aren’t we all just humans, really?

Of course not.

• Obviously, women are humans, but “to go for a walk with one’s eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits, interests and occupations are different.” (xx)

What is the relationship between the categories “man” and “woman”?

• Not polar opposites: male both positive and neutral, women only negatively defined– Grammatically the case: “mankind”– Men are objective, women subjective due to

station, biology• Woman’s body as prison (xxii)

– Women defined in reference to men, men not defined in reference to women

For man, woman is the Other

• The Other: the not-You (the One, the subject) (xxiii)

• When an individual or group sets itself up as the One, other individuals or groups take on the category of the Other, defined by being not-the One (objectified).

But the Othering of women is unique

• Usually, when the One (A) encounters the Other (B), it learns that the Other (B) thinks of itself as the One, and the One (A) as the Other– Manichean identity in Fanon’s The Wretched of the

Earth– This is true of nations, religions, races– But it is not true of women, who see men as the One

and themselves as the Other– Jews, African-Americans, proletarians all say “we”, but

women do not (except possibly at feminist gatherings)• Like men, they say “women”

• Historically, “woman has always been man’s dependent, if not his slave,” but even now that things have begun to improve legally, custom (the influence of past over present) prevents full equality in business & politics (xxvi)– A matter of respect and prestige

Why have women not moved toward equality more quickly?

• Women lack the means to organize themselves as a unit– They see themselves as the Other– Unlike any other oppressed group, women live

scattered among their oppressors– They require their oppressors in a way that blacks

do not require whites• It is possible to imagine an all-black humanity in a way

that it is not possible to imagine an all-woman humanity

• “To decline to be the Other, to refuse to be party to the deal—this would be for women to renounce all the advantages conferred on them by their alliance with the superior caste…” (xxvii)

Being & Oppression

• The Othering of women is a project of bad faith (inauthenticity, denial of freedom of self and/or others)– It attributes to them a being (you could say an

essence) that is different and inferior• At best, “equality in difference”. But what equality is it that

says ‘I am good at politics, business, and art, while you are good at babies and housekeeping, and these are equal things’?

• “Separate but equal” – Limiting American blacks to menial work and then concluding menial work is what they are good at.

Defined as inferior

• Mauriac: “We listen on tone of polite indifference . . . to the most brilliant among them, well knowing that her wit reflects more or less luminously ideas that come from us.”– Us? Mauriac here puts himself in company with

“St. Paul, Hegel, Lenin, and Nietzsche” in asserting the inferiority of women (xxxi)

– But who the hell is Mauriac? How can he possibly share the credit of these other men?

This remains true even in democratic societies

• There, men “do not postulate woman as inferior, for today they are too thoroughly imbed with the ideal of democracy not to recognize all human beings as equals.” (xxxi)– Valuing the role of wife, mother, & partner, a man

can feel that social subordination between the sexes no longer exists• When he notices that women are excluded from

positions of power, he attributes this to biology, nature, being.

What is the goal for Beauvoir?

• NOT TO MAKE WOMEN HAPPY• Liberation =/= happiness!– “Are not women of the harem more happy than

women voters?”– “It is not too clear just what the word ‘happy’

really means and still less what true values it may mask.” (xxxiv, my emphasis)

– “I am interested in the fortunes of the individual as defined not in terms of happiness but in terms of liberty.” (xxxv)

• “In particular, those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced happy on the pretext that happiness consists of being at rest. This notion we reject, for our perspective is that of existentialist ethics….” (xxxiv)

• A women “finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other. They propose to stabilize her as an object…” (xxxv)

Biology

• Male & female are facts of biology, but man and woman are socially constructed categories, part of the situation in which we find ourselves.

• What is woman?– The womb & the egg? Is man the sperm?• Passivity vs. activity

– But nature shows us that reproduction is much more complicated and varied than this. (16)

• But it is doubtless true that reproduction is very different for males and females (and men and women)

• The body itself means that men and women experience the world in different ways– Their situations differ at the biological level

• Sex for men external, for women internal• For a man, puberty is (relatively) mild, and his

reproductive system works essentially the same from then until he dies– Thus, a man can feel unity with his body, he is his

body (26)

• But for women, sex & reproduction are entirely different– Menstruation often painful, affects moods– Sex is invasive, the Other within the One– Reproduction is painful and can be deadly, as the

interests of the species and of the individual diverge– Pregnancy is literally the presence of another creature

within the body– Menopause another strange & uncomfortable

change, but only after it does a woman have roughly the same relationship w/her body that a man does

• Thus, “woman, like man, is her body, but her body is something other than herself.” (29)– This point runs throughout Beauvoir’s analysis

• But these and other biological conditions (for example, the generally smaller size and lesser muscular strength of women compared to men) tell us nothing about why women have become the Other– Man not a natural species, but a historical idea– Under other conditions, these material conditions

could have different meanings• A taboo against striking women would mean that the male

advantage in violence is neutralized. A matter of society & culture.

• Biology cannot explain why women have been othered. It offers only facts, but what matters here is the interpretation of facts.– These facts in turn can be changed.