De Beauvoir states that while it is natural for humans to understand themselves in opposition to others, this process is flawed when applied to the genders. In defining woman exclusively as Other, man is effectively denying her humanity. The disciplines reveal indisputable “essential” differences between men and women but provide no justification for woman's inferiority. They all take woman's inferior “destiny” for granted.
De Beauvoir's primary thesis is that men fundamentally oppress women by characterizing them, on every level, as the other, defined exclusively in opposition to men. Man occupies the role of the self, or subject; woman is the object, the other. He is essential, absolute, and transcendent. She is inessential, incomplete, and mutilated. He extends out into the world to impose his will on it, whereas woman is doomed to immanence, or inwardness. He creates, acts, invents; she waits for him to save her.
I think she insists on the impossibility of comparing the “character” of men and women without considering the immense differences in their situation. Also, Her goal is to prove that women are not born “feminine” but shaped by a thousand external processes. She shows how, at each stage of her upbringing, a girl is conditioned into accepting passivity, dependence, repetition, and inwardness. Every force in society conspires to deprive her of subjectivity and flatten her into an object. Denied the possibility of independent work or creative fulfillment, the woman must accept a dissatisfying life of housework, childbearing, and sexual slavishness.
Question.
1. Do you agree with De Beauvoir? especially male
2.What do you think about some of the ways that women reinforce their own dependency?
3.If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, what do you think what is women?
No comments:
Post a Comment