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A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF LIBERATION STRATEGY
IN SIMONE deBEAUVOIR'S "THE SECOND SEX"

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omens-o:

A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF LIBERATION STRATEGY
IN SIMONE deBEAUVOIR'S ”THE SECOND SEX”

BY

Amber Katherine

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Philosophy

1990

ABSTRACT

A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF LIBERATION STRATEGY
IN SIMONE deBEAUVOIR'S "THE SECOND SEX"

BY

Amber Katherine

In The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir offers a liberation
strategy to women. Inherent in her strategy is a reliance on
the 'good faith' efforts of oppressors, which closes out the
possibility for the oppressed to take the first step toward
ending their oppression. If the object of liberation is to
put women. as a class, on the same terms as men, then any
strategy which holds the potential to actualize this goal
must be considered. I propose a strategy with this,
potential, and offer reasons why Beauvoir failed to consider
it. The strategy which I propose calls for women to separate
from oppressive contexts and interactions which maintain
them, and to search for and create counter-contexts without
oppressive Othering. Herein lies the possibility for the
oppressed to initiate their liberation struggle while under

oppression.

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Marilyn Frye for the careful attention
she has given to my work over the past two years, and for her
intellectual and political challenges and support. Very
special thanks to my mother, Kathryn Phillips, and my lover,

Martha Gass, for their encouragement, humor, and love.

ii

II.

III.

Iv.

V.

VI.

Liberation . .
Oppression . .
Contradiction?
Strategy . . .
"The Lesbian".
Conclusion . .

Bibliography .

TABLE

OF CONTENTS

iii

Page

15
17
22
28

30

 

I. Liberation

‘In The Second Sex1 Simone de Beauvoir answers the
question. ”What circumstances limit woman's liberty and how
can they be overcome?" (xli) from the perspective of
existentialist ethics. Her answer derives an ontological
explanation of oppression from women's "lived experience."2
and outlines a strategy for changing women‘s second class
situation. Her analysis employs the Sartrean categories of
'immanence' and 'transcendence' in order to articulate the
mechanics of oppression and liberation. Beauvoir tells us
that immanence "is a degradation of existence into the 'en-
soi'--the brutish life of subjection to given conditions--."
(xli) Its corrective, transcendence, is the "expansion [of
present existence] into an indefinitely open future." (ibid.)
through projects which change the givens. In The Ethics of
Ambiguity3 Beauvoir turns Sartre's characterization of human
existence as a struggle between the 'in-itself’ (immanence)
and the 'for-itself’ (transcendence) into a moral imperative:

assume the ambiguity of the human situation. resist the

temptations of immanence. and justify your existence by

 

1Simone de Beauvoir. The SecondfiSex. translated and
edited by H. M. Parshley (New York: Vintage) 1989.

2Parshley translated the title of Book II. "L'experience
vecue" as "Woman's Life Today" rather than "Lived
Experience." Margaret A. Simons, "The Silencing of Simone de
Beauvoir: Guess What's Missing From The Second,$ex." Women's
Studies InternationaliForum 6:5. 1983, p. 563.

3Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity. translated
by Bernard Frechtman (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel) 1980.

1

2

perpetually engaging in the constructive movement of
transcendence. In The SecongiSex she argues that attaining
this ethical ideal will end the oppression of women. The
ethical task for men is to abandon the dream of an absolute
Other in 'woman', who will affirm his liberty without
reciprocity. The ethical task for women is to reject the
metaphysical comfort of being a 'woman' and accept the risk
of transcendence in order to affirm their liberty.

There is an important distinction to be made in
Beauvoir's use of the concept of liberation. The distinction
lies in the difference between projects which serve as modes
of transcendence and the project of ending oppression. In
order to make explicit the difference between liberation from
givens, or in Sartrean terminology "facticity," and
liberation which ends oppression I offer a brief sketch of
each, followed by an explanation of what conspires to confuse
the two.

In Beauvoir's analysis transcendence is an individual's
attempt to assert her/his subjectivity, for her/himself,
through projects which continually re-create the self and the
situation. One engages in projects for her/himself in order
to elicit recognition from other subjects. One wants
recognition from other subjects because it promises the
reflective affirmation of existence which is not possible by
performing the Cogito or through encounters with Nature.
Transcendence is liberating activity in that it is the

assertion of the will over otherwise determining

 

3
circumstances. When one chooses to undertake a constructive

project. rather than attempting to conceal that there is a
choice with deterministic explanations and excuses. liberty
prevails. Take. for example. an artist whose hands are
pulverized in a lawn mower accident. The facts are grim:
without hands this artist appears to have lost the means to
create the paintings which drew so much recognition. Now the
artist faces a choice: transcend the facts by creating new
projects or pretend that the facts have determined fate once
and for all. Choosing the latter is what Sartre calls "bad
faith." Resisting bad faith is one liberation struggle which
Beauvoir defines:

. . . along with the ethical urge of

each individual to affirm his

subjective existence, there is also

the temptation to forgo liberty and

become a thing. (xxxiii)
It is important to note that transcendence involves a special
kind of agency. In order to qualify as transcendent one's
actions must be "positive,” rather than "negative."4 In
positive projects a subject is able to confer significance
for itself by destroying given situations and constructing
new ones. Negative actions. on the other hand, are
repetitive and senseless, contributing nothing to the

affirmation of one's own existence, and not altering the

givens. Hence. the choice to seek existence in 'mere being'

 

‘Beauvoir first introduces the positive/negative
contrast in Theggthics of Ambiguity, p. 30-32. She employs
the contrast there. and in The Second Sex, as a mechanism for
distinguishing between free agency and agency under oppression.

4
is not transcendence, but its opposite.

Liberation from oppression is a struggle in which
individuals of a class attempt to regain the ability to
choose positive projects for themselves. One is liberated,
in this sense, when one's class attains the means for
transcendence. Oppression prohibits women from acting,
working, and creating on equal term with men, that is,
prevents women from having the means for transcendence.
Putting the class of women on the same terms as the class of
men is the other liberation struggle Beauvoir defines:

. . . it will be through attaining

the same situation as [men's] that

[women] will find emancipation; (715)
She makes a clear distinction between facticity and the
"obstacles" of oppression when she claims. about liberation.
that

[ilt is not a question of abolishing

in woman the contingencies and

miseries of the human condition. but

of giving her the means for

transcending them. (727)
Beauvoir argues that establishing a relationship between
women and men of mutual recognition and subjective
affirmation will bring about the end of oppression.

Throughout the text these two distinct conceptions of
liberation--the liberation from facticity by transcendence
and the liberation from oppression--are juxtaposed without
reference to the different natures of the two struggles.

Hence. in her text the notion of liberation is ambiguous.

Consider the following passage:

5

Every time transcendence falls back into

immanence. stagnation, there is a

degradation of existence into the "en-

soi"--the brutish life of subjection to

given conditions--and of liberty into

constraint and contingence. This

downfall represents a moral fault if the

subject consents to it: if it is

inflicted upon him, it spells frustration

and oppression. (xli)
Notice that Beauvoir compares oppression and bad faith. They
are similar in that both involve the movement from
transcendence to immanence. In other words. they are similar
in ontological effect. Michele Le Doeuff has suggested that
Beauvoir employed this analogy in order to make oppression.
which is generally unnoticed or misunderstood. visible within
the dominant discourse.5 Regardless of whether it has served
this purpose, it obscures the difference between oppression
and bad faith. and this in turn. I will argue later. gives
rise to the appearance of a contradiction in Beauvoir's
liberation strategy.

The difference between being oppressed and being in bad
faith has first to do with the circumstances of the descent
to the "en-sci." If one "consents" to immanence. then one
may at any time choose the path of transcendence. If, on the
other hand. immanence. is "inflicted." then the path of
transcendence is blocked. A second difference is that the
ontological effect of oppression is an experience shared by

an entire class of individuals, in this case women. The "en—

soi" of bad faith is an individual experience. This

 

aMichele Le Doeuff. "Simone de Beauvoir and
Existentialism." Feminist Studieg 6:2. 1980, p. 279.

6

difference can be seen between the situation of the artist
and that of women. If the artist chooses to create a new
project, the excuses he once made about the accident
determining his fate do not impede his new decision.

However, women's attempts to reject the "en-soi" of 'woman'
are met with deeply entrenched and strictly enforced cultural
norms held in place by ”legislators. priests. philosophers,
writers. and scientists [who] have striven to show that the
subordinate position of woman is willed in heaven and
advantageous on earth.” (xxxiv) Hence. women are unable to
choose new projects because the deterministic explanations
and excuses, which others have made for their situation.
stick to them with the force of social stigma, impeding other
courses of action. Being in bad faith is an individual.
moral problem. while being oppressed is class-based,
political problem.

The struggle to liberate women from oppression is not
the struggle to overcome immanence consented to in bad faith.
For the oppressed. ending oppression is. by definition, a
precondition for engaging in the struggle to overcome
immanence which is consented to. In this paper I will
address the liberation struggle which has as its object,
ending oppression. My examination of Beauvoir's liberation
strategy is intended to provide insight into the question.
how can women end oppression while under it? To begin with I
will outline the mechanics of oppression, according to

Beauvoir's analysis. Second, I will explore the apparent

7

contradiction between her analysis of these mechanisms and
her liberation strategy. and attempt to untangle it in order
to present a coherent sketch of her strategy. Third. I will
offer criticism. and comment on the limitations of her
approach. Finally, I will follow a lead on an alternative
strategy which is unintentionally given in her chapter "The

Lesbian."

II. Oppression

Beauvoir has defined oppression as the "infliction" of

immanence. With regard to the oppression of women she tells

us that
. . . what peculiarly signalizes the
situation of woman is that she--a
free and autonomous being like all
human creatures--nevertheless finds
herself living in a world where men
compel her to assume the status of
the Other. They propose to stabilize
her as object and to doom her to
immanence since her transcendence is
to be overshadowed and forever
transcended by another ego
(conscience) which is essential and
sovereign. (xli)
In this section I will explain what it means. according to
Beauvoir, to "stabilize her as an object,” to "inflict
immanence.” to "compel her to assume the status of the

other," or to have her transcendence "overshadowed" and
transcended by another.

Clearly she could not mean, by these words, that
oppression is the reduction of a female to thing or an
object: that would be murder rather than oppression.
Beauvoir recognizes that women can act under oppression. In
fact, part of what it means to be oppressed is to perform the
act of affirming other subjects by recognizing their
projects. But in these acts of recognition women must
pretend to be passive and receptive. Being an object, in
this sense, is exemplified by the "damsel in distress" who
feigns helplessness in order to feature the heroic efforts of

her rescuer. To be stabilized as an object means that one
8

9

does not engage in the positive activities of a subject.
(615) The objective of her actions is to be the Object he
transcends.

To her, immanence "inflicted" certainly could not mean
the injection of some secret subjectivity-destroying poison.
If Beauvoir had thought that oppression was terminal she
would not have attempted a liberation strategy in the first
place. Although Beauvoir argues that oppression is deeply
rooted in history, and in social and economic structures, she
is not a determinist. Hence, oppression is a contingent
reality, maintained through, and therefore, subject to change
through, human agency. In her words,

. . . it must be repeated once more that
in human society nothing is natural and
that woman, like much else, is a product
elaborated by civilization. The
intervention of others in her destiny is
fundamental: if this action took a
different direction, it would produce a
quite different result. Woman is
determined not by her hormones or by
mysterious instincts, but by the manner
in which her body and her relation to the
world are modified through the action of
others than herself. (725)

What, exactly. is the manner in which her body and her
relation to the world are modified? According to Beauvoir,
the static myth of 'woman' is the preferred tool for the
desired modifications.

It projects into the realm of Platonic
ideas a reality that is directly
experienced or is conceptualized on a
basis of experience; in place of fact,
value, significance. knowledge, empirical
law, it substitutes a transcendental
Idea, timeless, unchangeable, necessary.
This idea is indisputable because it is

10

beyond the given: it is endowed with
absolute truth. (253)

Through myths about what it is to be a woman the essentialist
concept of 'woman' arises. A myth is a representation of
some aspect of reality from a particular point of view. Or,
as Beauvoir puts it, ”a myth implies a subject who projects
his hopes and his fears toward a sky of transcendence." (142)
The myths which create 'The Eternal Feminine' are
representations of women's realities from the point of view
of men. (143) There are myths which tell the story of
'woman' as "treasure, prey. sport and danger, nurse, guide,
judge, mediatrix, mirror . . ." (186). "virgin, mother, wife.
sister, servant, loved one, fiercely virtuous one, smiling
odalisque . . ." (195), and mysterious one (256). This
smorgasbord of possible ways to be a 'woman' represents the
diversity in the points of view of men. But in this the
myths are unanimous: to be a 'woman' is to be the other for
man and demand no reciprocity, that is. to be the absolute
Other.

Beauvoir believes, following Hegel, that in one's search
for affirmation of subjectivity that ”each separate conscious
being aspires to set himself up alone as sovereign subject."
(140) The struggle for this desired position ends in a
master-slave dialectic which, ultimately, satisfies neither
party. Beauvoir employs these fundamentals of human
consciousness and interaction in her analysis to explain the
phenomenon of the oppression of women which is not the same

as slavery. Perceiving women as a threat to their desire to

11

be the lone sovereign subjects, men devise the static myth-
scheme as a way to keep women from reducing them to slavery.
Since the myths also do not reduce women to slavery, they
provide men with the recognition and affirmation desired. but
without the dangers inherent in the master-slave dialectic.
(141) In Beauvoir's words,

[tlhe taste for eternity at a bargain,

for a pocket-sized absolute, which is

shared by a majority of men, is satisfied

by myths. (260)
The myths represent women as the absolute Other because, from
men's point of view, doing so is an expedient way of
resolving ontological dilemmas.

The myth of 'woman' is generated out of projects which
serve as a mode of transcendence for men; the manner in which
women's bodies and relation to the world are modified can be
explained through a closer look at how these projects create
a context. ”Religions, traditions, language, tales, songs,
and movies" (260) have been among the cultural vehicles
carrying the blueprint of 'woman' into society. These
projects have contributed, historically, to the construction
of a social context. the ”masculine universe." (597) They
have received recognition under the patriarchal ideology of
determinism, which interprets women's situation as 'woman's'
essence.

Within this context, 'woman', the transcendental Idea,
forms the basis of a categorical imperative for women: be

the absolute Other. Men need not enforce this imperative

with the negative force of interdiction. Compliance is

12

assured by their role in the positive historical construction
of women's total life experience, form birth to death, in
every realm. To say that women experience their
transcendence as overshadowed and transcended by men's means
that through their projects men have created a context in
which women's actions are meaningless beyond the terms of
men's projects. Beauvoir explains the dictates of the
masculine universe in the following terms,

If the definition provided for this

concept is contradicted by the behavior

of flesh-and-blood women, it is the

latter who are wrong: we are told not

that Femininity is a false entity, but

that the women concerned are not

feminine. (253)
Oppression is the structuring of a social context within
which women are required to recognize and affirm the projects
of men reified in that context. denying them the ability to
pursue their own projects. To be oppressed is to have the
social identity 'woman’ imposed under the aegis of biological
determinism. The message is: living as a 'woman' is living
in conformity with nature.

Beauvoir contends that women know that this message is
mystification, trickery, and lies. (720-721) Even if a
woman recognizes that "there is not any fixed truth" (612),
still she "lacks the means to reconstruct society in
different form." (ibid.) If she violates social norms and
constraints, in an attempt to refuse the role of 'woman', she

must face the social consequences because, as Beauvoir points

out, "there is no negative attitude that does not imply a

13
positive counterpart.” (683) For example. if one rejects
'femininity,’ then one is not a subject, but a
"transvestite," a "homosexual." an "insurgent," an
"eccentric," (ibid.) in a word, a monster. Whatever the
positive implications are, if she is not being a 'woman', she
will not receive the recognition and affirmation her
subjectivity requires. Resisting creates a dilemma for her:
refusing the identity of 'woman,’ which mutilates her
subjectivity, entails the denial of any acceptable social
identity. (682-683) This is not a dilemma men face because
having their subjectivity affirmed creates their social
identities. Hence, for women individual revolt is "impotent"
(608) within the context of social relations with men. Thus
Beauvoir presents oppression as a kind of facticity which
cannot be transcended.' But the idea that there is any
facticity which cannot be transcended violates a fundamental
tenet of Sartrean existentialism.

Beauvoir claims that she is committed to the perspective
of existentialist ethics (x1) and there are passages which
clearly suggest that women have an authentic choice in the
matter of their situation. For example, she states. at the
end of her refutation of psychoanalytical determinism:

I believe that [woman] has the power to
choose between the assertion of her
transcendence and her alienation as an
object. (50)
In the same passage, in another formulation of this claim,

she characterizes 'woman' as an offering rather than an

imposition or infliction:

14

I conceive her as hesitating between the

role of object, Other which is offered

her, and the assertion of her liberty.

(52)
Often this position is manifest in a prescriptive claim, for

example,
. . . what woman needs first of all is to

undertake. in anguish and pride, her

apprenticeship in abandonment and
transcendence: that is, in liberty.

(711)
These passages are juxtaposed to those in which Beauvoir

describes the paralysis of oppression.

III. Contradictions?

If oppression is the prevention of ability to choose to
transcend, then what sense does it make for Beauvoir to state
that women can and should transcend? Under oppression either
women can transcend or they cannot. To define oppression as
the infliction of immanence. and to argue, at the same time.
that the oppressed can choose transcendence appears to imply
a contradiction. Is it, or is it not, Beauvoir's position
that a woman cannot transcend her oppression? In this
section I will argue that this is, in fact, her position, and
that she holds it, without contradiction, together with the
position that women are capable of transcendence.

Consider the passage in which Beauvoir states her belief
that women have the "power" to choose between immanence and
transcendence. The fact that this statement is part of her
attack on the Freudian ideology of determinism indicates that
the power which she is referring to is that of human
potential. She is saying that a weak superego and penis envy
do not strictly determine a woman's destiny, and therefore,
that a woman, ”a free and autonomous being like all human
creatures" (xli) is capable, under imaginable circumstances,
of choosing between immanence and transcendence.

It is important to note that Beauvoir does not signify
in that quotation whether she is referring to immanence which
is "consented" to or "inflicted." However, in the quotation
which follows, in the same passage. Beauvoir uses the term

"offered" to signal that she is referring to immanence which
15

16
is "consented" to in bad faith, rather than "inflicted" under
oppression. But if this is true, then the hesitating which
Beauvoir conceives must be post-oppression, because the end
of oppression is a pre-condition for the moral struggle.
Under post-oppression circumstances, it is still conceivable
that the social role of 'woman' could exist even if it were
not the basis of a categorical imperative for all women.
(And there may even be women around who would be immoral
enough to choose it.)

Under this interpretation her prescriptive claim makes
more sense. When oppression ends, women must undertake their
apprenticeship in transcendence if they hope to "gain the
supreme victory," that is, "to establish the reign of liberty
in the midst of the world of the given.” (732)

This interpretation resolves the apparent contradiction
by pointing out that it is only the result of the ambiguity
which arises from explaining the oppression of women by
analogy with immanence consented to in bad faith. Clearly,
Beauvoir is not advancing the incoherent proposition that
women "consent" to the "infliction" of immanence. To the
contrary, she holds that,

No subject will readily volunteer to
become the object, the inessential: it is
not the Other who, in defining himself as
the Other, establishes the One. The

Other is posed by the One in defining
himself as the One. (xxx)

IV. Strategy

If one is clear about the definitions. and the
difference between oppression and bad faith, then, as I have
already pointed out, it is obvious that ending the oppression
of women is a precondition for moral liberation. But what is
required to end oppression, that is, to put women into the
running for moral liberation? What will it take so that
women, as a class, have the ability to transcend on the same
terms as men? On this point Beauvoir is not ambiguous:
intersubjective relations between men and women must be
characterized by reciprocity. In other words, "mutually
recognizing each other as subject, each will yet remain for
the other an other.” (731) Beauvoir argues that it is
possible to rise above the fundamental desire to be affirmed
as the only sovereign subject through "friendship and
generosity." (140)

Immediately the question arises. who is she prescribing
this program for? Women already recognize men as subjects.
Women already are others for men. Women already are friendly
and generous. Women already are holding up their end of the
reciprocity pact. There is good reason to believe that what
Beauvoir means when she says, "to gain the supreme victory,
it is necessary. . .that. . .men and women unequivocally
affirm their brotherhood [sic],” (732) is that men need to
affirm women's subjecthood. Consider the following
statements:

[women] get from neither society nor
17

18

their husbands the assistance they would
need to become in concrete fact the
equals of the men. (680)

. . . she will be a full human being.
"when," to quote a letter of Rimbaud,
"the infinite bondage of woman is broken,
when she will live in and for herself,

man--hitherto detestable--having let her
go free." (263)

The message is clear that women's liberation from oppression
depends on men.
Oppression is men's bad faith project. According to

Beauvoir,

[mlan gladly accepts as his authority

Hegel's idea according to which the

citizen acquires his ethical dignity in

transcending himself toward the

universal, but as a private individual he

has a right to desire and pleasure. His

relations with woman. then, lie in a

contingent region, where morality no

longer applies, where conduct is a matter

of indifference. (613)
If the oppression of women is going to end, men are going to
have to give up the project of making their class that of
lone sovereign subjects. They must, in other words, give up
the idea that there is a contingent region. They must decide
to be moral in their relations with women. Beauvoir devotes
long passages at two points in the book to persuading men to
do just this. (261-263, 729-731) She directs to them the
promise that "to recognize in woman a human being is not to
impoverish man's experience. . .” (261) and that "there is
no doubt that both men and women will profit greatly from the

new situation." (724)

There are no passages devoted to convincing women that

19

it is in their interests to try to end oppression. This is
because, according to Beauvoir. the quest is not in their
hands with either an individual, or a collective effort. At
an individual level the woman's resistance is impotent:

[slhe protests against man, against life.

against her situation. but she does not

make good her escape from them. (610)
This is because she has been denied under oppression the
opportunity to do anything constructive. (624, 627, 679) Her
protests amount to no more than negation and denial,

having no independent domain, she cannot

oppose positive truths and values of her

own to those asserted and upheld by

males: (611)
Those few "insurgents" who have challenged the man-made
domain, have not succeeded in liberating themselves from
oppression. Beauvoir explains that George Eliot, Virginia
Woolf, Jane Austen, and the Bronte sisters,

. . . have had to expend so much energy

negatively in order to free themselves

from outward restraints that they arrive

somewhat out of breath at the state from

which masculine writers of great scope

take their departure: they do not have

enough strength left to profit by their

victory and break all the ropes that hold

them back. (709)
Individual women, who take action to liberate themselves, are
constantly frustrated by the confines of the oppressive
context. Within it, their actions are not recognized, and
achieve no meaning. Oppression reduces individual resistance
to futile wheel-spinning. Resistant acts, as resistant,

affirm only the status quo. not a different regime of truths

and values.

20

Beauvoir recognizes that if women were to liberate
themselves from oppression it would have to be by a
collective effort. (627) However, she does not think that
this strategy is very promising. She holds that "women lack
the means to reconstruct society in a different form." (612)
The "means" which she is referring to is the subjective
attitude exhibited in class solidarity. In other words,
"women do not say 'We'. . ." (xxxi) A sense of solidarity
with others of one's class is, according to Beauvoir,
necessary if projects to establish a counter-context are to
have meaning. She claims that women,

. . . are united only in a mechanical

solidarity from the mere fact of their

similarity, but they lack that organic

solidarity on which every unified

community is based. (597)
Apparently women's "organic" connections are with men.

The bond that unites her to her

oppressors is not comparable to any

other. The division of the sexes is a

biological fact, not an event in human

history. Male and female stand opposed

within a primordial Mitsein, and woman

has not broken it. The couple is a

fundamental unity with its two halves

riveted together, and the cleavage of

society along the line of sex is

impossible. (xxxi)
So it is in relations between the sexes that Beauvoir focuses
her strategy for liberation from oppression. She puts her
hope, first, in men's moral sensibilities. When men control
their desire to dominate others, and pursue projects other

than that of reifying the Idea of the Eternal Feminine, then

reciprocal relations between men and women will be possible.

21

Only then will women have before them the opportunity to
choose transcendence, and to earn the subjective recognition
and affirmation that their freely chosen projects deserve.

This strategy follows logically from her analysis of
oppression. If men are responsible for oppression, and if
the mechanisms of this oppression are such that women's
actions against it are futile, then, ending it. ultimately,
is men's burden. While it may be true that men can have an
active part in the liberation struggle to end oppression, I
do not agree that women, must or will, wait for men to take

responsibility for the project.

V. "The Lesbian"

If the primary obstacle keeping women from careers of
transcendence is incessant Othering by men, if oppression is
not terminal. but is continuously re-created by contextual
construction (and Beauvoir's analysis indicates that it is).
then there are at least two strategic options open to women.
The first is to wait for men to change. The second is to
separate from the oppressive context and interactions which
maintain it. and to search for and create counter-contexts
without oppressive Othering. Beauvoir's strategy falls under
the first option. I believe that the second option is more
promising for those women who refuse to wait for oppressors
to end oppression. Although separation can be perceived as a
form of revolt, it differs from the kind of revolt which
Beauvoir discusses in two ways. First, it relieves women of
the internal conflict, which oppression creates, between
making oneself through projects of transcendence and making
oneself a 'woman'. Second, it offers a kind of resistance
which does not affirm the truths and values of the status
quo.

Two difficulties keep Beauvoir from seriously
entertaining the second option. First, if Otherness is
inflicted, making all action negative, then what makes
disengaging possible? If the context of "primordial Mitsein"
makes "the cleavage of society along the line of sex"
impossible, then what possibility is there of separating from

this context? Which leads to the second difficulty, if women.
22

23

as a group, suffer a fundamental incapacity for class
solidarity, then what possibility is there of creating
counter-contexts within which different meanings can arise?
I believe Beauvoir's inability to find satisfactory answers
to these difficult questions led her to advocate only the
first strategic Option in the struggle to end oppression.
Ironically, Beauvoir's text provides clues for answers which
she herself does not take up and develop. Consider the
following observation from the chapter entitled "The
Lesbian,"

[mlany women who are employed in

workshops and offices, surrounded by

women, and who see little of men, will

tend to form amorous friendships with

females: they will find it materially

and morally simple to associate their

lives. (418)
Beauvoir is describing, for the first time in Book II, "Lived
Experience." a situation which differs radically from all the
other situations--marriage, motherhood, social life,
prostitution, childhood, maturation, and old age--which she
addresses in the book. Although women are alone together at
times in all these situations, Beauvoir does not acknowledge
it. Only in the chapter "The Lesbian" does she consider
relations between women in the absence of men. Beauvoir is
more than aware that these types of situations change women's
experience. Specifically, they reduce the pressure upon
women to play the role of 'woman'.

Never in the presence of husband or

[male] lover can she feel wholly herself:

but with her woman friend she need not be
on parade, need not pretend: they are

 

24

too much of a kind not to show themselves
frankly as they are. (420)

In the presence only of women, even within the broader
context of the "masculine universe" (597). there is no
physical male presence to monitor her actions or interpret
their meaning. And as I said earlier. the context of
oppression only survives as long as there are real live men
and women "reproducing" it through their "intercourse." Even
the temporary absence of men creates two possibilities:
first, to stop play acting the role of 'woman', the absolute
Other: and therefore, second, to have their actions acquire
positive meaning.

Certainly the objection could be raised, that the
absence of men will not stop the incessant Othering. because
the desire to be the "lone sovereign subject" is fundamental
to human consciousness. In the absence of men, women will
fall into the dialectic of master and slave. I have two
responses. First, even if this were true it would not
necessarily amount to oppression, especially if the women
were equals with regard to other class variables. After all,
when men engage with each other on equal terms they often
attempt to lord over each other, but it is not oppression.
However, there appears to be no good reason why the drive to
dominate should be any more fundamental to consciousness than
being 'woman' is to nature. Hence, my second point is this:
if the myth of 'woman' is a representation of female identity
from a particular point of view (men), then why isn't the

master-slave dialectic a representation of human relations

25

from a particular point of view (ruling class)? I think
Beauvoir's mistake was to pay more attention to the claim
about the fundamental nature of human consciousness, than to
the social position and gender of the claimant. I am saying
that the absence of hostile othering among the oppressed
indicates the possibility of another form of intersubjective
relating. Lesbian relationships, according to Beauvoir,
begin with reciprocity.

Between women love is contemplative:

caresses are intended less to gain

possession of the other than gradually to

re-create the self through her;

separateness is abolished. there is no

struggle, no victory, no defeat; in exact

reciprocity each is at once subject and
object. . . (416)

 

Of course it is true that these situations of women
together, in the absence of men, do not constitute, in and of
themselves. counter-contexts. I have indicated that Beauvoir
insists that ”women have never constituted a closed and
independent society: they form an integral part of the group
which is governed by males and in which they have a
subordinate place." (597) While it may be true that women
have never constituted a "closed and independent society,"
Beauvoir admits that women have created counter-contexts,
within patriarchal society, where it is, nevertheless,
possible for them to exist beyond the category 'woman.’

The woman who makes herself a lesbian
because she haughtily declines male
domination is often pleased to find the
same proud amazon in another. Formerly
lesbians flourished among the women

students at Sevres, who lived together
far from men; they took pride in

26

belonging to a feminine elite and wished

to remain autonomous subjects: the common

feeling that united them against the

privileged caste enabled each to admire

in a friend the impressive being whom she

idolized in herself; in their mutual

embraces each was at once man and woman

and each was enchanted with the other's

androgynous qualities. (419)6
The fact that there is a chapter in the book entitled "The
Lesbian" indicates that counter-contexts already exist. The
existence of lesbian would be inconceivable if the "masculine
universe" which only recognizes 'women' exhausted the
contextual possibilities. What is required for women to be
able to choose not to be 'woman' is not a wholly independent
world, but simply a context where they can limit their
interactions with men, and where their choices will receive
recognition and affirmation.

Beauvoir has argued that the Mitsein between men and
women is "organic" and that solidarity among women is
"mechanical," and therefore. not the grounds for the
subjective voice "we." But she has also insisted that what
is "organic" only acquires meaning in "the light of an
ontological, economic, social, and psychological context."
(36) Beauvoir's mistake here was to fail to extend her

existentialist critique of determinism to the heterosexual

Mitsein. The "biological fact" of heterosexual reproduction,

 

6Parshley translated "la femme quise fait lesbienne" as
"the woman who turns lesbian," rather than "the woman who
makes herself a lesbian." Claudia Card. "Lesbian Attitudes
and The Second Sex," Women's Studies International Forum 8:3.
p. 209. I believe his translation obscures the fact that
becoming a lesbian is a positive project engaged in by women.

7'7

‘00

like the "biological fact" of female physiology, "can be
defined only in.a world of values." (60) Beauvoir's failure
to understand the "fundamentalness" of the Mitsein as a
product of values in a context, keeps her from recognizing
the potential in, and existence of, relations between women.
The strategy which Beauvoir fails to consider. that of
women gathering away from the immediate pressure to be the
absolute Other, in order to engage in their own constructive
projects, at once creating a counter-context and giving
meaning to their projects through it. is nevertheless,
possible and being actualized. I have argued that the
physical absence of the oppressor, even within his context,
opens up new possibilities for women. And that turning to
each other for reciprocal recognition and affirmation of
subjectivity is a strategic option available to women in the
struggle to end oppression. Women do not suffer a
fundamental incapacity for class solidarity. In solidarity,

women are able to choose transcendence.

VI. Conclusion

In this paper I have tried to show how Beauvoir's
liberation strategy closes out the possibility for women, as
individuals and members of a class, to take the first step
toward ending oppression. In addition, I have argued that
the possibility, of initiating the liberation struggle while
under oppression. is suggested within Beauvoir's analysis,
although it goes undeveloped by her. If the goal is
ultimately to put women, as a class, on the same terms as
men, i.e. a world where all have the means for transcendence
within their grasp, then any strategy which holds the
potential to actualize this goal must not be ignored. There
is evidence to suggest that this strategy became more
apparent to Beauvoir as the women's liberation movement
developed in the 1960's and 1970's in France and the United
States. In an interview with Deirdre Bair in 1982 she
endorsed a separatist strategy.

[plroperly feminist attitudes arose when
women discovered that the men of '68 did
not treat them as equals. . . They
realized that they would have to take
their fate into their own hands and
separate their battles from the larger
revolutionary rhetoric of the men. I
agreed with them because I understood
that women could not expect their
emancipation to come from general
revolution but would have to create their
own. Men were always telling them that
the needs of the revolution came first
and their turn as women came later. . .
and so I realized that women would have
to take care of their problems in ways
that were personal, direct, and
immediate. They 2caould no longer sit

29

waiting patiently for men to change the
society for them because it would never
happen unless they did it themselves.7

 

7Deidre Bair, "Women's Rights in Today's World: An
Interview with Simone de Beauvoir," 1984 Britannica Book of
the Year (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1984). p. 25.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bair. Deirdre. "Women's rights in Today's World: An

 

 

Interview with Simone de Beauvoir." 1984 Britannica Book
of the Year. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc..
1984.

de Beauvoir. Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity, translated by
Bernard Frechtman. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel. 1980.

de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex, translated and edited
by H.M. Parshley. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Card, Claudia. "Lesbian Attitudes and The Second Sex."
Womenfls Studies International Forum, 8:3.

 

Le Doeuff, Michele. "Simone de Beauvoir and Existentialism."
Feminist Studies, 6:2.

 

Simons, Magaret A. "The Silencing of Simone de Beauvoir:
Guess What's Missing From The Second Sex." Women's
Studies International Forum. 6:5, 1983.

 

30

 

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