#la mere is 'mother' in french but with contexted i figured it was obvious without an explanation | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

insteadhere · 4 years

Text

A note on "One is not born, but rather becomes, (a) woman." + a bit more Simone de Beauvoir

I was just reflecting on how Simone de Beauvoir's words are frequently misinterpreted. And I know we all know what she meant, but I was inspired to pull out my copy and just write a bit, in case anyone ever needs a quick reference.

Note, I have a 2011 Vintage Books Edition, translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. Here is the quite, in context, on p.283. Notably, this is the opening of the Lived Experience section, which follows the Myths section.

One is not born, but rather becomes, woman. No biological, psychic, or economic destiny defines the figure that the human female takes on in society, it is civilization as a whole that elaborates this intermediary product between the male and the eunuch that is called feminine. Only the mediation of another can constitute an individual as the Other.

First, note the first sentence, and the absence of the article 'a'. The omission is essential. See the translation note (p. xviii):

One particularly complex and compelling issue was how to translate la femme. In Le deuxième sexe, the term has at least two meanins: "the woman" and "woman", depending on the context. "Woman" in English used alone without an article captures woman as an institution, a concept, femininity as determined and defined by society, culture, hisotry. This, in a French sentence such as Le problème de la femme a toujours ètè un problème d'hommes, we have used "woman" without an article: "The problem of woman has always been a problem of men."

Second, note the two sentences that follow the oft-cited sentence: There is nothing about a human female that makes her position in society as 'woman' necessary.

Third, keep in mind that the central question of The Second Sex is the alterity of women and what she calls "the feminine condition"—that is why, how, and to what effect are women 'the Other' (and in a way that is different from other oppressed groups). 'woman' here is the concept, and the resulting lived experience of human females in today's society.

Here are some excerpts from the introduction:

Everyone agrees there are females in human species; today, as in the past, they make up about half of humanity; and yet we are told that "femininity is in jeopardy" ; we are urged, "Be women, stay women, become women." So not every female human being is necessarily a woman; she must take part in this mysterious and endangered reality known as femininity. Is femininity secreted by the ovaries? is it enshrined in a Platonic heaven? Is a frilly petticoat enough to bring it down to earth? (...)

Does the word "woman," then, have no content? It is what advocates of Englightenment philosophy, rationalism, or nominalism vigorously assert: women are, among human beings, merely those who are arbitrarily designated by the word "woman" (...) But nominalism is is a doctrine that falls a bit short; and it is easy for antifeminists to show that women are not men. Certainly woman like man is a human being; but such an assertion is abstract; the fact is that every concrete human being is always uniquely situated. To reject the notions of the eternal feminine, of the black soul, or the Jewish character is not to deny that there are today Jews, blacks, or women: this denial is not a liberation for those concerned but an inauthentic flight.

(...)

"What is a woman? Merely stating the problem suggests an immediate answer to me. it is significant that I pose it. it would never occur to a man to write a book on the singular situation of males in humanity. If I want to define myself, I first have to say, "I am a woman"; all other assertions will arise from this basic truth. A man never begins by positioning himself as an individual of a certain sex: that he is a man is obvious. (...) Woman has ovaries and a uterus; such are the particular conditions that lock her in her subjectivity; some even say she thinks with her hormones. man vainly forgets that his anatomy also includes hormones and testicles. He grasps his body as a direct and normal link with he world that he believes he apprehends in all objectivity, whereas he considers woman's body an obstacle, a prison, burdened by everything that particularizes it. (...) He is the Subject; he is the Absolute. She is the other.

(...) Woman's drama lies in this conflict between the fundamental claim of every subject, which always posits itself as essential, and the demands of a situation that constitutes her as inessential. How, in the feminine condition, can a human being accomplish herself? What paths are open to her? Which ones lead to dead ends? How can she find independence within dependence? What circumstances limit women's freedom and can she overcome them? These are the fundamental questions we would like to elucidate. This means that in focusing on individual's possibilities, we will define these possibilities not in terms of happiness but in terms of freedom.

And just to be clear about what Simone thought about how this freedom can be achieved:

This liberation can only be collective, and it demands above all that the economic evolution of the feminine condition be accomplished. There have been and there still are many women who do seek to attain individual salvation on their own. They try to justify their existence within their own immanence, that is, to achieve transcendence through immanence. It is this ultimate effort—sometimes ridiculous, often pathetic—of the imprisoned woman to convert her prison into a heaven of glory, her servitude into sovereign freedom, that we find in the narcissist, the woman in love, and the mystic. (p. 664. Note, she addresses these 'kinds of women' in the following chapters)

And she does envision a particular kind of world in which this liberation could be achieved:

A world where men and women would be equal is easy to imagine because it is exactly the one the Soviet revolution promised: women raised and educated exactly like men would work under the same conditions and for the same salaries; erotic freedom would be accepted by custom, but the sexual act would no longer be considered a remunerable "service"; women would be obliged to provide another livelihood for themselves; marriage would be based on a free engagement that the spouses could break when they wanted to; motherhood would be freely chosen—that is, birth control and abortion would be allowed—and in return, all mothers and their children would be given the same rights; maternity leave would be paid for by the society that would have responsibility for the children, which does not mean that the would be taken from their parents but that they would not be abandoned to them. (...)

Woman is defined neither by her hormones, nor by the mysterious instincts but by the way she grasps, though foreign consciousness, her body and her relation to the world; the abyss that separates adolescent girls from adolescent boys was purposefully dug out from early infancy; later it would be impossible to keep woman from being what she was made, and she will always trail this past behind her; if the weight of this past is accurately measured, it is obvious that her destiny is not fixed in eternity. One must certainly not think that modifying her economic situation is enough to transform woman: this factor has been and remains the primordial factor of her development, but until it brings about the moral, social and cultural consequences it heralds and requires, the new woman cannot appear... (pp. 760-1)

#simone de beauvoir #radfem #theory #women #women's liberation

18 notes · View notes