elf; neither immutable essence nor flawed choice hasdoomed her to immanence and inferiority. They were imposed on her.All oppression creates a state of war. This particular case is noexception. The existent considered as inessential cannot fail to attemptto reestablish his sover

sees fit; the amateur, rather than seizingwords as an interindividual relation, an appeal to the other, sees inthem the direct revelation of her feelings; editing or crossing out forher means repudiating a part of self; she does not want to sacrificeanything both because she delights in what she is and because shehopes not to become other. Her sterile vanity comes from the fact thatshe cherishes herself without daring to construct herself.Thus, very few of the legions of women who attempt to dabble inliterature and art persevere; those who overcome this first obstaclevery often remain divided between their narcissism and an inferioritycomplex. Not being able to forget oneself is a failure that will weighon them more heavily than in any other career; if their essential goal isan abstract self-affirmation, the formal satisfaction of success, theywill not abandon themselves to the contemplation of the world: theywill be incapable of creating it

ion. Above all, in studies andprofessions requiring a degree of inventiveness, originality, and somesmall discoveries, a utilitarian attitude is disastrous; conversations,reading outside the syllabus, or a walk that allows the mind to wanderfreely can be far more profitable even for the translation of a Greektext than the dreary compilation of complex syntaxes. Crushed byrespect for those in authority and the weight of erudition, her visionblocked by blinkers, the overly conscientious female student kills hercritical sense and even her intelligence. Her methodical determinationgives rise to tension and ennui: in classes where female secondaryschool students prepare for the Sèvres examination, there is a stiflingatmosphere that discourages even slightly spirited ind

er male colleague. She wants tolive both like a man and like a woman; her workload and her fatigueare multiplied as a re

of men. Only those women withpolitical convictions, active in trade unions, who are confident in thefuture, can give an ethical meaning to the thankless daily labor; but aswomen deprived of leisure time and inheriting a tradition ofsubmissiveness, it is understandable that they are just beginning todevelop their political and social awareness. It is understandable thatsince they do not receive the moral and social benefits they couldlegitimately expect in exchange for their work, they simply resignthemselves to its con

e other. Today, the majority ofworkers are exploited. Moreover, social structures have not beendeeply modified by the changes in women’s condition. This worldhas always belonged to men and still retains the form they haveimprinted on it. It is important not to lose sight o

But especially, it confirms the world order; it justifiesresignation by bringing hope for a better future in an asexual heaven.This is why today women are still a powerful asset in the hands of theChurch; it is why the Church is so hostile to any measure that mightfacilitate their emancipation. Women must have religion; there must bewomen, “real women,” to perpetuate reli

The woman is no longer robbed of her transcendence, sinceshe will dedicate her immanence to God; souls’ merits are judged onlyin heaven and not according to their terrestrial accomplishments; herebelow, as Dostoevsky would have said, they are never more thanoccupations: shining shoes or building a bridge is the same vanity;over and above social discriminations, equality of the sexes isreestablished.

if necessary. They openly counton the woman to consent to making herself guilty of a crime: her“immorality” is necessary for the harmony of moral society, respectedby men. The most flagrant example of this duplicity is man’s attitudeto prostitution: it is his demand that creates the offer; I have spoken ofthe disgusted skepticism with which prostitutes view respectablegentlemen who condemn vice in general but show great indulgencefor their personal foibles; they consider girls who make a living withtheir bodies perverse and debauched, and not the men who us

al: she refuses to play the game because she knows thedice are loaded

There is much feminine behavior that has to be interpreted asprotest.

cts. The fact is that when a woman is engaged in anundertaking worthy of a human being, she knows how to be as active,effective, and silent, as ascetic, a

values. The respect women grant toheroes and to the masculine world’s laws stems from theirpowerlessness and ignorance; they acknowledge these laws notthrough judgment but through an act of faith: faith draws its fanaticalpower from the fact that it is not knowledge: it is blind, passionate,stubborn, and stupid; what it puts forward is done unconditionally,against reason, against history, against all refutation. This stubbornreverence can take two forms depending on circumstances: sometimesit is the content of the law and sometimes the empty form alone thatthe woman passionately abides by. If she belongs to the privilegedelite that profits from the given social order, she wants it unshakable,and she is seen as intr

nce and respect. She hasno grasp, even in thought, on this reality that involves her. It is anopaque presence in her eyes. That means she has not learned thetechnology that would enable her to dominate matter; as for her, she isnot fighting with matter but with life, and life cannot be mastered bytools: one can only submit to its secret laws. The world does notappear to the woman as a “set of tools” halfway between her will andher goals, as Heidegger defines it: on the contrary, it is a stubborn,indomitable resistance; it is dominated by fate and run through withmysterious capric

But caring for this renown, her surest asset, subjects her to the hardestof tyrannies: that of public opinion. We know that Hollywood starsfall into slavery. Their bodies are no longer their own; the producerdecides on their hair color, weight, figure, and type; teeth are pulledout to change the shape of a cheek. Diets, exercise, fittings, andmakeup are daily chores. Going out and flirting are part of “personalappearances”; private life is just a moment in their

Paradoxically, those women who exploit their femininity tothe extreme create a situation for themselves nearly equal to that of aman; moving from this sex that delivers them to men as objects, theybecome subject

their fame. It is this need to pleaseanother or a crowd that connects the movie star to the hetaera. Theyplay a similar role in society: I will use the word “hetaera” todesignate women who use not only their bodies but also their entireperson as exploitable

il. Clothes can be an instrument of conquest but not aweapon of defense; their art is to create mirages, they offer the vieweran imaginary object: in the erotic embrace and in daily relationsmirages fade; conjugal feelings like physical love exist in the realm ofreality.

As woman is an object, it is obvious that how she is adorned anddressed affects her intrinsic value. It is not pure frivolousness for herto attach so much importance to silk stockings, gloves, and a hat:keeping her rank is an imperious obligation. In America, a great partof the working woman’s budget is devoted to beauty care and clothes;in France, this expense is lighter; nevertheless, a woman is all themore respected if she “presents well”; the more she needs to findwork, the more useful it is to look well-off: elegance is a weapon, asign, a banner of respect, a letter of

It is this confusion with an unreal object—necessary, perfect likea hero in a novel, like a portrait or a bust—that flatters her; she strivesto alienate herself in it and so to appear frozen,

ale role. This integration oferoticism into social life is particularly obvious in the “eveninggown.” To mark a social gathering, that is, luxury and waste, thesedresses must be costly and delicate, they must be as uncomfortable aspossible; skirts are long and so wide or so complicated that theyimpede walking; under the jewels, ruffles, sequins, flowers, feathers,and false hair, woman is changed into

egant; whether the outfit disguises, deforms, or moldsthe body, in any case, it delivers it to view. This explains whydressing is an enchanting game for the little girl who wants to look atherself;

t her. It would obviously be better forthe child if his mother were a complete person and not a mutilatedone, a woman who finds in her work and her relations with the groupa self-accomplishment she could not attain through his tyranny; and itwould be preferable also for the child to be left infinitely less to hisparents than he is now, that his studies and amusements take placewith other children under the control of adults whose links with himare only impersonal and dispassio

or; the couple is a social person, defined by the family,class, milieu, and race to which it belongs, attached by ties ofmechanical solidarity to groups socially similar to themselves; thewoman is the one most likely to embody this most purely: thehusband’s professional relations often do not reflect his social level,while the wife, who does not have the obligations brought about bywork, can limit herself to the company o

Such an obligation is not at all natural: nature could never dictate amoral choice; this implies an engagement. To have a child is to take ona commitment; if the mother shrinks from it, she commits an offenseagainst human existence, against a freedom; but no one can impose iton her. The relation of parents to children, like that of spouses, mustbe freely ch

adult women. The mother likes torule over her feminine universe without competition; she wants to beunique, irreplaceable; and yet here her young assistant reduces her tothe pure generality of her function. She scolds her daughter sternly if,after being away for two days, she finds her household in disorder;but she goes into fits of anger if it so happens that family lifecontinued along well without her. She cannot accept that her daughterwill really become her double, a substitute of herself. Yet it is stillmore intolerable that she should boldly assert

been. The transcendence of an artisanor a man of action is driven by a subjectivity, but for the future motherthe opposition between subject and object disappears; she and thischild who swells in her form an ambivalent couple that lifesubmerges; snared by nature, she is plant and animal, a collection ofcolloids, an incubator, a

It is sometimes said that abortion is a “class crime,” and this is veryoften true. Contraceptive practices are more prevalent in thebourgeoisie; the existence of bathrooms makes their use easier thanfor workers or farmers deprived of running water; young girls in thebourgeoisie are more careful than others; a child is less of a burden inthese households: poverty, insufficient housing, and the necessity forthe wife to work outside the home are among the most commonreasons for abortio

But pregnancy is above all a drama playing itself out in the womanbetween her and herself. She experiences it both as an enrichment anda mutilation; the fetus is part of her body, and it is a parasite exploitingher; she possesses it, and she is possessed by it; it encapsulates thewhole future, and in carrying it, she feels as vast as the world; but thisvery richness annihilates her, she has the impression of not beinganything else. A new existence is going to manifest itself and justifyher own existence, she is proud of it; but she also feels like theplaything of obscure forces, she is tossed about, assaulted. What isunique about the pregnant woman is that at the very moment her bodytranscends itself, it is grasped

nts. If this is morality, then what kind ofmorality is it? It must be added that the men who most respectembryonic life are the same ones who do not hesitate to send adults todeath in

There are few subjects on which bourgeois society exhibits morehypocrisy: abortion is a repugnant crime to which it is indecent tomake an allusion. For an author to describe the joys and suffering of awoman giving birth is perfectly fine; if he talks about a woman whohas had an abortion, he is accused of wallowing in filth anddescribing humanity in an abject light: meanwhile, in France everyyear there are as many abortion

In reality, just as biologically males and females are nevervictims of each other but all together of the species, the spousestogether submit to the oppression of an institution they have notcreated. If it is said men oppress women, the husband reactsindignantly; he feels oppressed: he is; but in fact, it is the masculinecode, the society developed by males and in their interest, that hasdefined the feminine condition in a form that is now for

her some money. Manyyoung couples give the impression of perfect equality. But as long asthe man has economic responsibility for the couple, it is just anillusion.

great sexual love that leaves them free in their friendships andoccupations; others are linked by a friendship that does not hampertheir sexual freedom; more rarely there are still others who are bothlovers and friends but without seeking in each other their exclusivereason for living. Many nuances are possible in the relations of a manand a woman: in companionship, pleasure, confidence, tenderness,complicity, and love, they can be for each other the most fruitfulsource of joy, richness, and strength offered to a

There is a deliberate confusion between these two words—“assuming” and “loving”—and the mystification stems from this:one does not love what one assumes. One assumes one’s body, past,and present situation: but love is a movement toward an other, towardan existence separated from one’s own, toward a finality, a future; theway to assume or take on a load or a tyranny is not to love it but torevolt.

The couple is a community whose members have lost theirautonomy without escaping their solitude; they are staticallyassimilated to each other instead of sustaining a dynamic and livelyrelation together; this is why they can give nothing to each other,exchange nothing on a spiritual o

she lets her husband think for her; it ishe who will be the couple’s consciousness. Through timidity,awkwardness, or laziness, she leaves it up to the man to formulatetheir common opinions on all general and abstract sub

When she suspiciously inspects the stalls, the housewife isqueen; the world, with its riches and traps, is at her feet, for hertaking. She tastes a fleeting triumph when she empties her shoppingbasket on the

they feel part of a community that—for an instant—is opposed to thesociety of men as the essential to the

portable form. The home becomesthe center of the world and even its own one truth; as Bachelardappropriately notes, it is “a sort of counter- or exclusionaryuniverse”;*refuge, retreat, grotto, womb, it protects against outsidedangers: it is this confused exteriority that bec

e), the home encapsulatesall the bourgeois values: faithfulness to the past, patience, economy,caution, love of family, of native soil, and so forth; the home’schampions are often women, since it is their task to ensure thehappiness of the familial group; as in the days when the domina sat inthe atrium, their role is to be “mistress of the house.” Today the homehas lost its patriarchal splendor; for most men, it is simply a place tolive, no longer overrun by memories of deceased generations and nolonger imprisoning the centuries to come. But woman still tries to giveher “interior” the meaning and value a true home

Love, then, is not what bourgeois optimism promises the young bride:the ideal held up to her is happiness, that is, a peaceful equilibriumwithin immanence and repetition. At certain prosperous and securetimes, this ideal was that of the whole bourgeoisie and specifically oflanded property owners; their aim was not the conquest of the futureand the world but the peaceful conservation of the past, t

Marriages, then, are generally not based on love. “The husband is,so to speak, never more than a substitute for the loved man, and notthat man himself,” said Freud. This dissociation is not accidental. It isimplicit in the very nature of the institution. The economic and sexualunion of man and woman is a matter of transcending toward thecollective interest and not of individual ha

be free.” A good number of Americanwomen have won their sexual freedom; but their experiences are likethose of the young primitive people described by Malinowski in “TheBachelors’ House”—girls who engage in pleasures withoutconsequences;* they are expected to marry, and only then will they befully considered adults. A woman alone, in America even more thanin France, is a socially incomplete being, even

the home. Thecharge society imposes on her is considered a service rendered to thehusband: and he owes his wife gifts or a marriage dowry

The economic evolution of woman’s condition is in the process ofupsetting the institution of marriage: it is becoming a union freelyentered into by two autonomous individuals; the commitments of thetwo parties are personal and reciprocal; adultery is a breach of contractfor both parties; either of them can obtain a divorce on the samegrounds. Woman is no longer limited to the reproductive function: ithas lost, in large part, its character of natural servitude and has cometo be regarded as a freely assumed responsibility;1 and it is consideredproductive work since, in many cases, maternity leave necessitated bypregnancy must be paid to the mother by the sta

r. It might be that one of the two women desires a child; eithershe sadly resigns herself to her childlessness or both adopt a child orthe one who desires motherhood asks a man for his services; the childis sometimes a link, sometimes also a new s

In truth, there is never only one determining factor; it is always aquestion of a choice made from a complex whole, contingent on a freedecision; no sexual destiny governs an individual’s life: on thecontrary, his eroticism expresses his general attitude to

n all love—sexual or maternal—there is both greed and generosity,the desire to possess the other and to give the other everything; butwhen both women are narcissists, caressing an extension ofthemselves or their reflection in the child or the lover, the mother andthe lesbian are notably sim

ch. What is in any case extremely frequent in all societies andclasses is that the virgin is rushed by an egotistical lover seeking hisown pleasure quickly, or by a husband convinced of his conjugalrights who takes his wife’s resistance as an insult, to the point ofbecoming furious if the defloration

war. This act, involving thepollution of one being by another, imposes a certain pride on thepolluter and some humiliation on the polluted, even when she isconsenting.”4 This last phrase introduces a new myth: that maninflicts a stain on woman. In fact, sperm is not excrement; one speaksof “nocturnal pollution” because the sperm does not serve its naturalpurpose; while coffee can stain a light-colored dress, it is not said tobe waste that defiles the stomach. Other men maintain, by contrast,that woman is impure because it is she who is “soiled by discharges”and that she pollutes the

“The generative act, consisting of the occupation of one being byanother,” writes Benda, “imposes, on the one hand, the idea of aconqueror, on the other of somethi

s relationship. The marriagestructure, like the existence of prostitutes, proves it: the woman givesherself; the man remunerates her and takes her. Nothing forbids themale to act the master, to take inferior creatures: ancillary loves havealways been tolerated, whereas the bourgeois woman who givesherself to a chauffeur or a gardener is socially degraded. Fiercelyracist American men in the South have always been permitted bycustom to sleep with black women, before the Civil War as today, andthey exploit this right with a lordly arrogance; a white woman whohad relations with a black man in the time of slavery would have beenput to death, and today she would

Coitus cannot take place without male consent, and malesatisfaction is its natural end result. Fertilization can occur without thewoman deriving any plea

timidly. As long as perfect economicequality is not realized in society and as long as customs allow thewoman to profit as wife and mistress from the privileges held bycertain men, the dream of passive success will be maintained in herand will hold back her own accomplishme

neither her family nor customs assist her attempts. Besides, even ifshe chooses independence, she still makes a place in her life for theman, for love. She will often be afraid of missing her destiny as awoman if she gives herself over entirely to any undertaking. She doesnot admit this feeling to herself: but it is there, it distorts all her bestefforts, it sets up limits. In any case, the woman who works wants toreconcile her success with purely feminine successes; that not onlyrequires devoting considerable time to her appearance and beauty butalso, what is more serious, implies that her vital

ds heroism too. One ofthe ways of assuming the fact that she is poorly integrated into societyis to go beyond its restricting

nd woods. In the paternal house reign mother,laws, custom, and routine, and she wants to wrest herself from thispast; she wants to become a sovereign subject in her own turn: butsocially she only accedes to her adult life by becoming woman; shepays for her liberation with an abdication; but in the midst of plantsand animals she is a human being; a subject, a freedom, she is freedboth from her family and from males. She finds an image of thesolitude of her soul in the secrecy of forests and the tangible figure oftranscendence in the vast horizons of

this double she identifies with herself but to whosepresence she passively submits is dangerous for her. This explainswhy she is touchy and vain. The slightest criticism or gibe destabilizesher. Her worth does not derive from her own effort but from a fickleapprobation. This is not defined by individual activities but by generalreputation

to hypocrisy. But above all,the adolescent girl is condemned to the lie of pretending to be object,and a prestigious one, while she experiences herself as an uncertain,dispersed existence, knowing her failings. Makeup, false curls,corsets, padded bras, are lies; the face itself bec

ut recourse. Taking without beingtaken in the anguish of becoming prey is the dangerous game ofadolescent feminine sexu

The girl gashes her thigh with a razor, burns herself withcigarettes, cuts and scratches herself; so as not to go to a boringgarden party, a girl during my youth cut her foot with an ax and hadto spend six weeks in bed. These sadomasochistic practices are bothan anticipation of the sexual experience and a revolt against it; girlshave to undergo these tests, hardening themselves to all possibleordeals and rendering them harmless, including the w

behavior. Rebuffingnature and society, the girl nettles and challenges them by manyoddities. She often has food manias: she eats pencil lead, sealing wax,bits of wood, live shrimp, she swallows dozens of aspir

action; a woman’s body—and specifically the girl’s—is a“hysterical” body in the sense that there is, so to speak, no distancebetween psychic life and its physiological realization. The turmoilbrought about by the girl’s discovery of the problems of pubertyexacerbates them. Because her body is suspect to her, she scrutinizesit with anxiety and sees it as

s subjectivity. Violence is the authentic test ofevery person’s attachment to himself, his passions, and his own will;to radically reject it is to reject all objective truth, it is to isolate one’sself in an abstract subjectivity; an anger or a revolt that does not exertitself in muscles remains imaginary. It is a terrible frustration not to beable to imprint the movements of one’s heart on the face of the earth.In the South of the United States, it is strictly impossible for a blackperson to use violence against whites; this rule is the key to themysterious “black soul”; the way the black experiences himself in thewhite world, his behavior in adjusting to it, the compensations heseeks, his whole way of feeling and acting, are explained on the basisof the passivity to which he is condemned. During the Occupation,the French who had decided not to let themselves resort to violentgestures against the occupants even in cases of provocation (whetherout of egotistical prudence or because they had overriding duties) felttheir situation in the world profoundly overturned: depending uponthe whims of others, they could be changed into objects, theirsubjectivity no longer had the means to express itself concretely, itwas merely a secondary phen

Very often the parents’ attitude contributes to inculcating shame inthe little girl for her physical appe

Prostrate, her face buried in her hands, she experiences the miracleof renunciation: on her knees she climbs to heaven; her abandon inGod’s arms assures her an assumption lined with clouds and angels.She models her earthly future on this marvelous experience. The childcan also discover it in other ways: everything encourages her toabandon herself in dreams to the arms of men to be transported to asky of glory. She learns that to be happy, she has to be loved; to beloved, she has to await love. Woman is Sleeping Beauty, DonkeySkin, Cinderella, Snow White, the one who receives and endures. Insongs and tales, the young man sets off to seek the woman; he fightsagainst dragons, he combats giants; she is locked up in a tower, apalace, a garden, a cave, chained to a rock

Rebellion is even more violent in the frequent cases when themother has lost her prestige. She appears as the one who waits,endures, complains, cries, and makes scenes: and in daily reality thisthankless role does not lead to any apotheosis; victim, she is scorned;shrew, she is detested; her destiny appears to be the prototype ofbland repetition: with her, life only repeats itself stupidly withoutgoing anywhere; blocked in her housewifely role, she stops theexpansion of her existence, she is obstacle and negation. Her daughterwants not to take af

ng. They often make up stories; they imaginethey are adopted, that their parents are not really theirs; they attribute asecret life to them; they dream about their sexual relations; they love toimagine that their father is misunderstood, unhappy, that he is notfinding in his wife the ideal companion that his daughter would be forhim; or, on the contrary, that the mother rightly finds him rough andbrutal, that she is appalled by any physical relations with him.Fantasies, acting out, childish tragedies, false enthusiasms, strangethings: the reason must be sought not in a mysterious feminine soulbut in the child’s si

n trifling matters; even thoughthe mother reigns over the household, she is clever enough to put thefather’s will first; at important moments, she makes demands,rewards, and punishes in his

A great part of housework can be accomplished bya very young child; a boy is usually exempted from it; but his sister isallowed, even asked, to sweep, dust, peel vegetables, wash anewborn, watch the stew. In particular, the older sister oftenparticipates in maternal c

But a little girl cannot incarnate herself in any part of her own body.As compensation, and to fill the role of alter ego for her, she ishanded a foreign object:

The difference that distinguishes her from boys is a fact that she couldassume in many ways. Having a penis is certainly a privilege, but onewhose value naturally diminishes when the child loses interest in hisexcretory functions and becomes socialized: if he retains interest in itpast the age of eight or nine years, it is because the penis has becomethe symbol of a socially valorized virility. The fact is that the influenceof education and society is enor

. The great privilege that the boy gets from it is that as heis bestowed with an organ that can be seen and held, he can at leastpartially alienate himself in it. He projects the mystery of his body andits dangers outside himself, which permits him to keep them at adistance: of course, he feels endangered through his penis, he fearscastration, but this fear is easier to dominate than the

nd death. He never manages toabolish his separated self: at the least he wishes to achieve the solidityof the in-itself, to be petrified in thing; it is uniquely when he is fixedby the gaze of others that he appears to himself as a being. It is in thisvein that the child’s behavior has to be interpreted: in a bodily form hediscovers finitude, solitude, and abandonment in an alien world; hetries to compensate for this catastrophe by alienating his existence inan image whose reality and value will be es

ted. For girls and boys, the body is first theradiation of a subjectivity, the instrument that brings about thecomprehension of the world: they apprehend the universe throughtheir eyes and hands, and not through their s

it. In an immediate way the newborn lives theprimeval drama of every existent—that is, the drama of one’s relationto the Oth

. If well before puberty and sometimes even starting fromearly childhood she already appears sexually specified, it is notbecause mysterious instincts immediately destine her to passivity,coquetry, or motherhood but because the intervention of othe

other. Woman is removed from their activities and doesnot take part in their jousts and combats: her entire situationpredestines her to play this role of

Confronted with arrested meaning and utilitarian instruments, sheupholds the mystery of intact things; she brings the breath of poetryinto city streets and plowed fields. Poetry attempts to capture thatwhich exists above everyday prose: woman is an eminently poeticreality since man projects onto her everything he is not resolved to be

Not only cities and nations but also entities and abstractinstitutions are cloaked in feminine traits: the Church, the Synagogue,the Republic, and Humanity are women, as well as Peace, War,Liberty, the Revolution, Victory. Man feminizes the ideal that heposits before him as the essential Other, because woman is thetangible figure of alterity; this is why almost all the allegories inlanguage and in iconography are w

As a servant, woman is entitled to the most splendidapotheosis.

glory. She is the inverse figure of the sinner Eve;she crushes the serpent under her foot; she is the mediator ofsalvation, as Eve was of d

Paradoxically, it was Christianity that was to proclaim the equality ofman and woman on a certain level. Christianity detests the flesh inher; if she rejects the flesh, she is, like him, a creature of God,redeemed by the Savior: here she can take her place beside males,among those souls guaranteed celestial happiness. Men and womenare God’s servants, almost as asexual as the angels, who, togetherwith the help of grace, reject earth’s temptations. If she agrees torenounce her animality, woman, from the very fact that she incarnatedsin, will also be the most radiant incarnation of the triumph of the electwho have conquere

Christianity is what drapes woman anew with frighteningprestige: one of the fears the rending of the unhappy consciousnesstakes for man is fear of the other sex. The Christian is separated fromhimself; the division of body and soul, of life and spirit, is consumed:original sin turns the body into the soul’s enemy; all carnal linksappear bad.17 Man can be saved by being redeemed by Christ andturning toward the celestial kingdom; but at the beginning, he is nomore than rottenness; his birth dooms him not only to death but todamnation; divine grace can open heaven to him, but all avatars of hisnatural existence are

Christianity’s repugnance for the feminine body is such that itconsents to doom its God to an ignominious death but saves him thestain of

but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and itsominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him. It is alsobecause he fears contingent destiny, because he dreams her immutableand necessary, that man looks for the idea’s exactitude on woman’sface, body,

th the devil. Virgins that menhave not subjugated, old women who have escaped their power, aremore easily looked upon as witches

be lent a soul; it seems to himthat he in fact created what he is the only one to

Appearing as the Other, woman appears at the sametime as a plenitude of being by opposition to the nothingness ofexistence that man experiences in itself; the Other, posited as object inthe subject’s eyes, is posited as in-itself, thus as being. Womanembodies positively the lack the existent carries in his heart, and manhopes to realize himself by finding himse

sely, woman; she is theperfect intermediary between nature that is foreign to man and the peerwho is too identical to him.1 She pits neither the hostile silence ofnature nor the hard demand of a reciprocal recognition against him; bya unique privilege she is a consciousness, and yet it seems possible topossess her in the

it: this is the tragedy of the unhappyconsciousness; each consciousness seeks to posit itself alone assovereign subject. Each one tries to accomplish itself by reducing theother to slavery. But in work and fear the slave experiences himself asessential, and by a dialectical reversal the master appears theinessential

aker form. Andabstract rights, as has just been said, have never been sufficient toguarantee woman a concrete hold on the world: there is not yet realequality today between the two

the mass of women is at the fringes of history, and foreach of them circumstances are an obstacle and not a springboard. Tochange the face of the world, one has first to be firmly anchored to it;but women firmly rooted in society are those subjugated by it; unlessthey are designated for action by divine right—and in this case theyare shown to be as capable as men—the ambitious woman and theheroine are strange monsters. Only since women have begun to feel athome on this earth has a Rosa Luxemburg or a Mme Curie emerged.They brilliantly demonstrate that it is not women’s inferiority that hasdetermined their historical insignificance: it is their historicalinsignificance that has doomed them to

Christian feminism joins forces with revolutionary feminism andMme Brunschvicg’s so-called independent feminism: in 1919,Benedict XV declares himself in favor of the women’s vote, andMonsignor Baudrillart and Père Sertillanges follow his lead withardent propaganda; Catholics believe in fact that women in Franceconstitute a conservative and religious element; this is just what theradicals fear: the real reason for their opposition is their fear of theswing votes that women represented. In the Senate, numerousCatholics, the Union Republican group, and extreme left parties arefor the women’s vote: but the majority of the assembl

in France. With artificialinsemination, the evolution that will permit humanity to master thereproductive function comes to completion. These changes havetremendous importance for woman in particular; she can reduce thenumber of pregnancies and rationally integrate them into her life,instead of being their slave. During the nineteenth century, woman inher turn is freed from nature; she wins control of her body. Relievedof a great number of reproductive servitudes, she can take on theeconomic roles open to her, roles that would ensure her control overher own person

A second consequence of the resigned inertia of women workerswas the salaries they were forced to accept. Various explanations withmultiple factors have been given for the phenomenon of low femalesalaries

aving mills. Employers often preferthem to men. “They do better work for less pay.” This cynical formulaclearly shows the drama of feminine labor. It is through labor thatwoman won her dignity as a human being; but it was a singularlydifficult and slow co

writes: “Woman cannot beemancipated unless she takes part in production on a large social scaleand is only incidentally bound to domestic work. And this hasbecome possible only within a large modern industry that not onlyaccepts women’s work on a grand scale but

As this abrupt industrial expansion demands a bigger labor marketthan male workers can provide, women’s collaboration is necessary.This is the great nineteenth-century revolution that transforms the lotof woman and opens a new era to her. Marx and Engels understandthe full impact this will have on women, promising

Femininity is a kind of “prolonged childhood” that sets womenapart from the “ideal type of the race.” This biological infantilismexpresses an intellectual weakness; the role of this purely affectivebeing is that of spouse and housewife, no match for man: “Neitherinstruction nor education is sui

s. In 1790, the right of the firstborn and masculineprivilege were eliminated; girls and boys became equals regardingsuccession; in 1792 divorce law was established, relaxing strictmarital ties; but these were feeble conquests. Bourgeois women weretoo integrated into the family to find concrete grounds for solidaritywith each other; they did not constitute a separate caste capable offorcing their demands: on an economic level, they existed as parasites.Thus, while women could have participated in events in spite of theirsex, they were prevented by their class, and those from the agitatingclass were condemned to stand aside because they were women.When economic power falls into the hands of the workers, it will thenbe possible for the working woman to gain the capacities that theparasitic woman, noble or bourgeois, nev

regime. The paradox still beingperpetuated today is established: the woman most fully integrated intosociety is the one with the fewest privileges in the society. In civilfeudality, marriage has the same features as in military feudality: thehusband remains the wife’s guardian. When the bourgeoisie isformed, it observes the same laws. In common law as in feudal law,the only emancipation is outside marriage; the daughter and thewidow have the same capacities as the man; but by marrying, thewoman falls under the husband’s guardianship and administration; hecan beat her; he watches over her behavior, relations, andcorrespondence and disposes of her fortune, not through a contract,but by the very fact of

th a man.” Germanic traditiongave women a defender as a guardian; when she no longer needs adefender, she goes without a guardian; as a sex, she is no longer taxedwith incapacity. Unmarried or widowed, she has all the rights of man;property grants her sovereignty: she governs the fief that she owns,meaning she dispenses justice, signs treaties, and

n.” Thus, the only marriage regime canon lawrecognizes is by dowry, rendering woman helpless and powerless.Not only is she prohibited from male functions, but she is also barredfrom making court depositions, and her testimony

as well; if society rejects thefamily by denying private property, woman’s condition improvesconsiderably. Sparta, where community property prevailed, was theonly city-state where the woman was treated almost as the equal ofman. Girls were brought up like boys; the wife was not confined toher husband’s household; he was only allowed furtive nocturnalvisits; and his wife belonged to him so loosely that another man couldclaim a union with her in the name of eugenics: the very notion ofadultery disappears when inheritance

One of the problems arising from societies based on agnation is thefate of inheritance in the absence of any male descendants. TheGreeks had instituted the custom of epiklerate: the female heir had tomarry her oldest relative in the paternal family (genos); thus theproperty her father bequeathed to her would be transmitted to childrenbelonging to the same group, and the estate remained the property ofthe paternal genos; the epikleros was not a female heir but only amachine to procreate a male heir; this custom placed her entirely atman’s mercy as she was automatically handed over to the firstborn ofher family’s men, who most often turned ou

cieties, the banning of incest takeson different forms, but from primitive times to our days it hasremained the same: man wishes to possess that which he is not; heunites himself to what appears to him to be Other than himself. Thewife must not be part of the husband’s mana, she must be foreign tohim: thus foreign to his

occasion of this relationship,” said Lévi-St

men. “The relationship of reciprocitywhich is the basis of marriage is not established between men andwomen, but between men by means of women, who ar

To say that woman was the Other is to say that a relationship ofreciprocity between the sexes did not exist: whether Earth, Mother, orGoddess, she was never a peer for man; her power asserted itselfbeyond human rule: she was thus outside of this rule. Society hasalways been male; political power has always be

Supreme idol in faraway regions of heaven and hades, woman onearth is surrounded by taboos like all sacred beings—she is herselftaboo; because of the powers she holds, she is seen as a magician or asorceress; she is included in prayers, and she can be at times apriestess like the druids among the ancient Celts; in certain cases sheparticipates in the government of the tribe, and at tim

e fields; nature as a whole seems like amother to him; the earth is woman, and the woman is inhabited by thesame obscure forces as t

le mystery. On a biological level, aspecies maintains itself only by re-creating itself; but this creation isnothing but a repetition of the same Life in different forms. Bytranscending Life through Existence, man guarantees the repetition ofLife: by this surpassing, he creates values that deny any value to purerepetition.

animals. The warrior risks his own life toraise the prestige of the horde—his clan. This is how he brilliantlyproves that life is not the supreme value for man but that it must serveends far greater than

to children. But in any case,to give birth and to breast-feed are not activities but natural functions;they do not involve a project, which is why the woman finds nomotive there to claim a higher meaning for her existence; shepassively submits to her biological de

, in humanity individual “possibilities” depend on theeconomic and social sit

In truth these facts cannot be denied: but they do not carry theirmeaning in themselves. As soon as we accept a human perspective,defining the body starting from existence, biology becomes anabstract science; when the physiological given (muscular inferiority)takes on meaning, this meaning immediately becomes dependent on awhole context; “weakness” is weakness only in light of the aims mansets for himself, the instruments at his disposal, and the laws heimposes. If he did not want to apprehend the world, the very idea of agrasp on things would have no meaning; when, in this apprehension,the full use of body force—above the usable minimum—is notrequired, the differences cancel each other out; where customs forbidviolence, muscular energy cannot be the basis for domination:existential, economic, and moral reference points are necessary todefine the notion of weakness concretely. It has been said that thehuman species was an anti-physis; the expression is not really exact,because man cannot possibly contradict the given; but it is in how hetakes it on that he constitutes its truth; nature only has reality for himinsofar as it is taken on by his action: his own

However, one might say, in the position I adopt—that ofHeidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty—that if the body is not a thing,it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and the outline for ourprojects.

s. As Merleau-Ponty rightly said, man is nota natural species: he is a historical idea. Woman is not a fixed realitybut a becoming; she has to be compared with man in her becoming;that is, her possibilitieshave to be defined: what skews the issues somuch is that she is being reduced to what she was, to what she istoday, while the question concerns her capacities; the fact is that hercapacities manifest themselves clearly only when they have beenrealized: but the fact is also that when one considers a being who istranscendence and surpassing, it is never possible to close the books.

ed. But this individuality is not asserted: the female abdicatesit for the benefit of the species that demands

maturation depending on t

ted, the female is thenalienated; she carries the fetus in her womb for vary

Where does thissubmission in woman come from?

solely a Mitsein* based on solidarity and friendship. On the contrary,they become clear if, following Hegel, a fundamental hostility to anyother consciousness is found in consciousness itself; the subjectposits itself only in opposition; it asserts itself as the essential and setsup the other as inessential, as the object.

These phenomena could not be understood if human reality were26

Humanity is male, and man defines woman, not in herself, but inrelation to himself; she is not considered an autonomous being.“Woman, the relative being,” writes Michelet. Thus Monsieur Bendadeclares in Lerapport d’Uriel (Uriel’s Report): “A man’s body hasmeaning by itself, disregarding the body of the woman, whereas thewoman’s body seems devoid of meaning without reference to themale. Man thinks himself without woman. Woman does not thinkherself without man.” And she is nothing other than what mandecides; she is thus called “the sex,” meaning that the male sees heressentially as a sexed being; for him she is sex, so she is it in theabsolute. She is determined and differentiated in relation to man, whilehe is not in relation to her; she is the inessential in front of theessential. He is the Subject; he is the Absolute. She is the Other.3The category of Other is as original as consciousness itself. Theduality between Self and Other can be found in the most primitivesocieties, in the most ancient mythologies; this division did not alwaysfall into the category of the division of the sexes, it was not based onany empirical given