(4) Introduction [door Judith Thurman]

"Like Woolf, and a striking number of other great women writers, Beauvoir was childless. And like Colette, who wasn’t (she relegated her late-born, only daughter to the care of surrogates), she regarded motherhood as a threat to her integrity. Colette is a ubiquitous presence in The Second Sex ..."(8)

"Beauvoir herself was as devout an atheist as she had once been a Catholic, and she dismisses religions — even when they worship a goddess — as the inventions of men to perpetuate their dominion."(14)

(35) VOLUME ONE - FACTS AND MYTHS

(35) Introduction

[Het wordt inderdaad al snel duidelijk hoeveel woorden De Beauvoir nodig heeft om iets uit te leggen. Ze is breedsprakig als in haar autobiografische boeken die ik ooit las.]

"Humanity is male, and man defines woman, not in herself, but in relation to himself; she is not considered an autonomous being.(41)"

"Why do women not contest male sovereignty? (...) Where does this submission in woman come from?"(44)

[Een terechte vraag. En inderdaad: vrouwen zijn niet in de minderheid, dus daar kan het niet aan liggen.]

"There have not always been proletarians: there have always been women; they are women by their physiological structure; as far back as history can be traced, they have always been subordinate to men; their dependence is not the consequence of an event or a becoming, it did not happen."(45)

"If woman discovers herself as the inessential and never turns into the essential, it is because she does not bring about this transformation herself. Proletarians say “we.” So do blacks. Positing themselves as subjects, they thus transform the bourgeois or whites into “others.” Women — except in certain abstract gatherings such as conferences — do not use “we”; men say “women,” and women adopt this word to refer to themselves; but they do not posit themselves authentically as Subjects. The proletarians made the revolution in Russia, the blacks in Haiti, the Indo-Chinese are fighting in Indochina. Women’s actions have never been more than symbolic agitation; they have won only what men have been willing to concede to them; they have taken nothing; they have received." [mijn nadruk] (46)

[Ik begrijp wat ze bedoelt, maar die laatste uitspraak lijkt me toch niet terecht, de strijd van de Sufragettes om het stemrecht kun je zien als een strijd die mannen dwong om dat stemrecht te verlenen ook al wilden ze dat helemaal niet zo graag. Maar het is waar dat vrouwen slecht georganiseerd waren of zijn, versplinterd levend in hun huishoudens, en geen organisatie buitenshuis hadden of hebben.]

"They live dispersed among men, tied by homes, work, economic interests, and social conditions to certain men — fathers or husbands — more closely than to other women. As bourgeois women, they are in solidarity with bourgeois men and not with women proletarians; as white women, they are in solidarity with white men and not with black women. The proletariat could plan to massacre the whole ruling class; a fanatic Jew or black could dream of seizing the secret of the atomic bomb and turning all of humanity entirely Jewish or entirely black: but a woman could not even dream of exterminating males. The tie that binds her to her oppressors is unlike any other." [mijn nadruk] (47)

[Die eerste uitspraak is in de praktijk van de vrouwenbeweging erg waar gebleken. De tweede uitspraak geeft een perspectief dat duidelijk maakt hoe lastig het is om hier rollen en gedrag te doorbreken.]

"The man who sets the woman up as an Other will thus find in her a deep complicity. Hence woman makes no claim for herself as subject because she lacks the concrete means, because she senses the necessary link connecting her to man without positing its reciprocity, and because she often derives satisfaction from her role as Other." [mijn nadruk] (50)

[Is dit nu het antwoord op de vraag waarom vrouwen zich onderwerpen aan de wil van mannen? Lijkt me niet overtuigend genoeg.]

"Lawmakers, priests, philosophers, writers, and scholars have gone to great lengths to prove that women’s subordinate condition was willed in heaven and profitable on earth. Religions forged by men reflect this will for domination: they found ammunition in the legends of Eve and Pandora. They have put philosophy and theology in their service ..."(53)

"One of the benefits that oppression secures for the oppressor is that the humblest among them feels superior: in the United States a “poor white” from the South can console himself for not being a “dirty nigger”; and more prosperous whites cleverly exploit this pride. Likewise, the most mediocre of males believes himself a demigod next to women."(57)

"Men profit in many other more subtle ways from woman’s alterity. For all those suffering from an inferiority complex, this is a miraculous liniment; no one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or more disdainful, than a man anxious about his own virility." [mijn nadruk] (59)

[Dat is maar al te waar gebleken. Dat is het 'privilege'-idee geworden. En zelfs aardige mannen die roepen dat vrouwen en mannen gelijkwaardig zijn blijken in de praktijk toch te vinden dat vrouwen 'minder' zijn. ]

"To see clearly, one needs to get out of these ruts; these vague notions of superiority, inferiority, and equality that have distorted all discussions must be discarded in order to start anew.
But how, then, will we ask the question? And in the first place, who are we to ask it? Men are judge and party: so are women." [mijn nadruk] (62)

"It is striking that most feminine literature is driven today by an attempt at lucidity more than by a will to make demands; coming out of an era of muddled controversy, this book is one attempt among others to take stock of the current state."(63)

"But it is no doubt impossible to approach any human problem without partiality: even the way of asking the questions, of adopting perspectives, presupposes hierarchies of interests; all characteristics comprise values; every so-called objective description is set against an ethical background. Instead of trying to conceal those principles that are more or less explicitly implied, we would be better off stating them from the start ... " [mijn nadruk] (64)

[Daar ben ik het helemaal mee eens.]

"This means that in focusing on the individual’s possibilities, we will define these possibilities not in terms of happiness but in terms of freedom."(67)

(69) Part one - Destiny

(69) Chapter 1 - Biological Data

"The term “female” is pejorative not because it roots woman in nature but because it confines her in her sex, and if this sex, even in an innocent animal, seems despicable and an enemy to man, it is obviously because of the disquieting hostility woman triggers in him." [mijn nadruk] (70)

"Nevertheless, a consciousness without a body or an immortal human being is rigorously inconceivable, whereas a society can be imagined that reproduces itself by parthenogenesis or is composed of hermaphrodites.
Opinions about the respective roles of the two sexes have varied greatly; they were initially devoid of any scientific basis and only reflected social myths." [mijn nadruk] (78)

"One should not get carried away with the pleasure of allegories ... (88)"

"The conclusion is thus that fundamentally the role of the two gametes is identical; together they create a living being in which both of them lose and surpass themselves. But in the secondary and superficial phenomena that condition fertilization, it is through the male element that the change in situation occurs for the new eclosion of life; it is through the female element that this eclosion is established in a stable element.
It would be rash to deduce from such an observation that woman’s place is in the home: but there are rash people." [mijn nadruk] (90)

[Gevoel voor humor en een mooie vorm van sarkasme heeft ze wel, zo blijkt.]

"The most complex and concretely individualized life is found in mammals. The split of the two vital moments, maintaining [the species] and creating [new individuals], takes place definitively in the separation of the sexes. In this branching out — and considering vertebrates only — the mother has the closest connection to her offspring, whereas the father is more uninterested; the whole organism of the female is adapted to and determined by the servitude of maternity, while the sexual initiative is the prerogative of the male." [mijn nadruk] (104)

"But for birds and above all mammals, the male imposes himself on her; very often she submits to him with indifference or even resists him. Whether she is provocative or consensual, it is he who takes her: she is taken. The word often has a very precise meaning: either because he has specific organs or because he is stronger, the male grabs and immobilizes her; he is the one that actively makes the coitus movements; for many insects, birds, and mammals, he penetrates her. In that regard, she is like a raped interiority. (...) His domination is expressed by the coital position of almost all animals; the male is on the female. And the organ he uses is incontestably material too, but it is seen in an animated state: it is a tool, while the female organ in this operation is merely an inert receptacle. The male deposits his sperm; the female receives it. Thus, although she plays a fundamentally active role in procreation, she endures coitus, which alienates her from herself by penetration and internal fertilization; (...) The female mammal recovers her autonomy after the birth of the young: a distance is thus established between her and them; and starting from this separation, she devotes herself to them; she takes care of them, showing initiative and invention; she fights to defend them against other animals and even becomes aggressive. But she does not usually seek to affirm her individuality; she does not oppose either males or females; she does not have a fighting instinct;(...) But this individuality is not asserted: the female abdicates it for the benefit of the species that demands this abdication." [mijn nadruk] (106-109)

[Bedoelt ze dit inclusief mensen? Dat kan ik me niet voorstellen. Dit kan door biologisch deterministen gebruikt worden om de rolverdeling tussen mannen en vrouwen te verdedigen. De vraag is altijd waarom we de 'actieve rol' altijd zo veel hoger waarderen dan de 'passieve rol'.]

"Hegel is right to see the subjective element in the male while the female remains enclosed in the species. Subjectivity and separateness immediately mean conflict. Aggressiveness is one of the characteristics of the male in heat. It cannot be explained by competition, since there are about the same number of females as males; it is rather competition that is explained by this combative will. It is as if before procreating, the male, claiming as his very own the act that perpetuates the species, confirms the reality of his individuality in his fight against his fellow creatures." [mijn nadruk] (110)

"Coitus is a rapid operation that does not reduce the male’s vitality. He manifests almost no paternal instinct. He very often abandons the female after mating. When he remains near her as head of a family group (monogamic family, harem, or herd), he plays a protective and nurturing role vis-à-vis the whole community; it is rare for him to take a direct interest in the children. In those species that are favorable to the flourishing of individual life, the male’s effort at autonomy — which, in the lower animals, leads to its ruin — is crowned with success. He is usually bigger than the female, stronger, quicker, more adventurous; he leads a more independent life whose activities are more gratuitous; he is more conquering, more imperious: in animal societies, it is he who commands." [mijn nadruk] (111)

[De uitleg die volgt over hoe mannen en hoe vrouwen hun lichaam ervaren is erg mooi. Menstruatie, zwangerschap, voeden, menopauze maken dat vrouwen hun lichaam ervaren als: ]

" ... an alienated opaque thing; it is the prey of a stubborn and foreign life that makes and unmakes a crib in her every month; every month a child is prepared to be born and is aborted in the flow of the crimson tide; woman is her body as man is his, but her body is something other than her."(121)

"Many of these characteristics are due to woman’s subordination to the species. This is the most striking conclusion of this study: she is the most deeply alienated of all the female mammals, and she is the one that refuses this alienation the most violently; in no other is the subordination of the organism to the reproductive function more imperious nor accepted with greater difficulty. Crises of puberty and of the menopause, monthly “curse,” long and often troubled pregnancy, illnesses, and accidents are characteristic of the human female: her destiny appears even more fraught the more she rebels against it by affirming herself as an individual. The male, by comparison, is infinitely more privileged: his genital life does not thwart his personal existence; it unfolds seamlessly, without crises and generally without accident. Women live, on average, as long as men, but are often sick and indisposed." [mijn nadruk] (127)

[Dit klopt niet meer helemaal, zo laat onderzoek zien. Vrouwen leven gemiddeld bijvoorbeeld langer dan mannen.]

"Because the body is the instrument of our hold on the world, the world appears different to us depending on how it is grasped, which explains why we have studied these data so deeply; they are one of the keys that enable us to understand woman. But we refuse the idea that they form a fixed destiny for her. They do not suffice to constitute the basis for a sexual hierarchy; they do not explain why woman is the Other; they do not condemn her forever to this subjugated role." [mijn nadruk] (128)

[Dat lijkt mij toch ook.]

"Woman’s enslavement to the species and the limits of her individual abilities are facts of extreme importance; the woman’s body is one of the essential elements of the situation she occupies in this world. But her body is not enough to define her; it has a lived reality only as taken on by consciousness through actions and within a society; biology alone cannot provide an answer to the question that concerns us: why is woman the Other? The question is how, in her, nature has been taken on in the course of history; the question is what humanity has made of the human female." [mijn nadruk] (137)

(138) Chapter 2 - The Psychoanalytical Point of View

"The enormous advance psychoanalysis made over psychophysiology is in its consideration that no factor intervenes in psychic life without having taken on human meaning; it is not the body-object described by scientists that exists concretely but the body lived by the subject. The female is a woman, insofar as she feels herself as such. Some essential biological givens are not part of her lived situation: for example, the structure of the ovum is not reflected in it; by contrast, an organ of slight biological importance like the clitoris plays a primary role in it. Nature does not define woman: it is she who defines herself by reclaiming nature for herself in her affectivity." [mijn nadruk] (139)

[Erg belangrijk dit. Bijvoorbeeld ook in de wereld van de gezondheidszorg waar medici 'objectief' op afstand over een lichaam praten en vergeten hoe een persoon zijn of haar lichaam ervaart. Er is de ziekte en hoe je de ziekte ervaart c.q. de betekenis die je aan de ziekte geeft.]

"Discussing psychoanalysis as such is not an easy undertaking. Like all religions — Christianity or Marxism — it displays an unsettling flexibility against a background of rigid concepts."(139)

Korte samenvatting van Freuds ideeën.

"The two essential objections to this description stem from the fact that Freud copied it from a masculine model."(145)

[Nog even afgezien van de totale nonsense ervan: dit is goed gezien en goed te onderbouwen.]

Hierna Adlers opvattingen.

"As for woman, her inferiority complex manifests itself in a rejection out of shame of her femininity: it is not the absence of a penis that unleashes this complex but the total situation; the girl envies the phallus only as a symbol of the privileges granted to boys; the father’s place in the family, the universal predominance of males, and upbringing all confirm her idea of masculine superiority. Later, in the course of sexual relations, even the coital posture that places the woman underneath the man is an added humiliation."(149)

[Dat klinkt al een stuk moderner en maatschappijkritischer. ]

"All psychoanalysts systematically refuse the idea of choice and its corollary, the notion of value; and herein lies the intrinsic weakness of the system." [mijn nadruk] (152)

[Mooie uitspraak. En dat kan gezegd worden van alle deterministen.]

"This approach enables us to understand, for example, the value generally given to the penis. It is impossible to account for this without starting from an existential fact: the subject’s tendency toward alienation; the anxiety of his freedom leads the subject to search for himself in things, which is a way to flee from himself; it is so fundamental a tendency that as soon as he is weaned and separated from the Whole, the infant endeavors to grasp his alienated existence in the mirror, in his parents’ gaze. Primitive people alienate themselves in their mana, their totem; civilized people in their individual souls, their egos, their names, their possessions, and their work: here is the first temptation of inauthenticity." [mijn nadruk] (157)

"Deprived of this alter ego [de penis - GdG], the little girl does not alienate herself in a graspable thing, does not reclaim herself: she is thus led to make her entire self an object, to posit herself as the Other; the question of knowing whether or not she has compared herself with boys is secondary; what is important is that, even without her knowing it, the absence of a penis keeps her from being aware of herself as a sex; many consequences result from this." [mijn nadruk] (159)

[Wonderlijk. En wat nu als we meisjes vanaf het begin leren om trots te zijn op hun clitoris, labia, en vagina? Dan zouden ze ook een 'alter ego' kunnen hebben en zichzelf niet als de Ander hoeven gaan zien. De vraag blijft waarom een penis zo belangrijk gevonden wordt door iedereen. Vrouwen doen daar hard aan mee, lijkt het.]

"For us woman is defined as a human being in search of values within a world of values, a world where it is indispensable to understand the economic and social structure; we will study her from an existential point of view, taking into account her total situation."(166)

(167) Chapter 3 - The Point of View of Historical Materialism

"Thus woman cannot simply be considered a sexed organism: among biological data, only those with concrete value in action have any importance; woman’s consciousness of herself is not defined by her sexuality alone: it reflects a situation that depends on society’s economic structure, a structure that indicates the degree of technical evolution humanity has attained."(167)

Weergave van Engels over vrouwen.

"Although the synthesis outlined by Engels marks an advance over those we have already examined, it is still disappointing: the most serious problems are dodged. The whole account pivots around the transition from a communitarian regime to one of private property: there is absolutely no indication of how it was able to occur ... Similarly, it is unclear if private property necessarily led to the enslavement of woman. Historical materialism takes for granted facts it should explain: it posits the interest that attaches man to property without discussing it; but where does this interest, the source of social institutions, have its own source? This is why Engels’s account remains superficial, and the truths he uncovers appear contingent. It is impossible to go deeper into them without going beyond historical materialism."(172)

"To discover woman, we will not reject certain contributions of biology, psychoanalysis, or historical materialism: but we will consider that the body, sexual life, and technology exist concretely for man only insofar as he grasps them from the overall perspective of his existence. The value of muscular strength, the phallus, and the tool can only be defined in a world of values: it is driven by the fundamental project of the existent transcending itself toward being."(182)

(182) Part two - History

(182) Chapter 1

"Ethnologists give extremely contradictory information about primitive forms of human society, even more so when they are well-informed and less systematic. It is especially difficult to formulate an idea about woman’s situation in the preagricultural period. We do not even know if, in such different living conditions from today’s, woman’s musculature or her respiratory system was not as developed as man’s."(183)

Desondanks: indertijd speelde de grotere spierkracht van mannen en de verzwakkende menstruatie - zwangerschap - voeden - cyclus bij vrouwen ("the burdens of reproduction" - 184) nog een rol. Dat bond vrouwen aan huis en aan huishouden als taak, terwijl mannen ongebonden nieuwe mogelijkheden konden verkennen.

"Because housework alone is compatible with the duties of motherhood, she is condemned to domestic labor, which locks her into repetition and immanence; day after day it repeats itself in identical form from century to century; it produces nothing new. Man’s case is radically different. He does not provide for the group in the way worker bees do, by a simple vital process, but rather by acts that transcend his animal condition. Homo faber has been an inventor since the beginning of time: even the stick or the club he armed himself with to knock down fruit from a tree or to slaughter animals is an instrument that expands his grasp of the world; bringing home freshly caught fish is not enough for him: he first has to conquer the seas by constructing dugout canoes; to appropriate the world’s treasures, he annexes the world itself. Through such actions he tests his own power; he posits ends and projects paths to them: he realizes himself as existent. To maintain himself, he creates; he spills over the present and opens up the future. This is the reason fishing and hunting expeditions have a sacred quality. Their success is greeted by celebration and triumph; man recognizes his humanity in them. This pride is still apparent today when he builds a dam, a skyscraper, or an atomic reactor. He has not only worked to preserve the given world: he has burst its borders; he has laid the ground for a new future."(188-189)

[Juist omdat er zoveel onbekend is over die periode weet ik niet of dit beeld wel zo klopt. Tegenwoordig hoor je in ieder geval dat het schema's voor gedrag en rolverdeling zijn die niet of niet helemaal kloppen.]

"The worst curse on woman is her exclusion from warrior expeditions; it is not in giving life but in risking his life that man raises himself above the animal; this is why throughout humanity, superiority has been granted not to the sex that gives birth but to the one that kills."(189)

[Dat is een kwestie van normatieve waardering. Je kunt je afvragen waarom het doden van leven zo veel belangrijker gevonden wordt dan het ter wereld brengen van leven. De maatstaf is niet 'gevaar' of 'risico', want het bevallen van kinderen was indertijd ongetwijfeld ook gevaarlijk en riskant. Waarom werden die 'mannelijke' activiteiten dan hoger gewaardeerd dan de 'vrouwelijke'? Waarom wordt er hoe dan ook oorlog gevoerd? Kwam dat indertijd zo vaak voor? Wat waren de redenen? Ik vind dat SdB daar geen antwoord op heeft gegeven.]

(193) Chapter 2

"Nevertheless, some historians maintain that precisely at that time, male superiority was the least marked; which means that this superiority is lived in an immediate form, not yet posited and willed; no one tries to compensate for the cruel disadvantages that handicap woman; but neither does anyone try to break her down, as will later happen in paternalistic regimes. No institution actually ratifies the inequality of the sexes; in fact, there are no institutions: no property, no inheritance, no legal system. Religion is neutral; the totems that are worshipped are asexual. It is when nomads settled the land and became farmers that institutions and law appeared.... in agricultural communities, woman is often vested with extraordinary prestige."(193-194)

"This is how she finds herself playing the principal role. Very often, children belong to their mother’s clan, bear her name, and share her rights, particularly the use of the land belonging to the clan. So communal property is transmitted through women: through them the fields and their harvests are reserved to members of the clan, and inversely it is through their mothers that members are destined to a given piece of land. The land can thus be considered as mystically belonging to women: their hold on the soil and its fruits is both religious and legal. The tie that binds them is stronger than one of ownership; maternal right is characterized by a true assimilation of woman to the land; in each, through its avatars, the permanence of life is achieved, life that is essentially generation."(197)

"But in reality this golden age of Woman is only a myth. To say that woman was the Other is to say that a relationship of reciprocity between the sexes did not exist: whether Earth, Mother, or Goddess, she was never a peer for man; her power asserted itself beyond human rule: she was thus outside of this rule. Society has always been male; political power has always been in men’s hands."(202)

[Je idealiseert dan de vrouw buiten de normale maatschappelijke verhoudingen. Binnen die verhoudingen heeft ze helemaal niets te vertellen. Dat ze als godin of wat ook op een voetstuk wordt gezet en wordt aanbeden zegt niets over de gelijke en gelijkwaardige relaties met mannen. Ik ben dat helemaal met haar eens.]

"Women have thus never constituted a separate group that posited itself for-itself before a male group; they have never had a direct or autonomous relationship with men."(203)

"Thus, the triumph of patriarchy was neither an accident nor the result of a violent revolution. From the origins of humanity, their biological privilege enabled men to affirm themselves alone as sovereign subjects; they never abdicated this privilege; they alienated part of their existence in Nature and in Woman; but they won it back afterward; condemned to play the role of the Other, woman was thus condemned to possess no more than precarious power: slave or idol, she was never the one who chose her lot. “Men make gods and women worship them,” said Frazer; it is men who decide if their supreme divinities will be females or males; the place of woman in society is always the one they assign her; at no time has she imposed her own law."(214)

"There is no ideological revolution more important in the primitive period than the one replacing matrilineal descent with agnation; from that time on, the mother is lowered to the rank of wet nurse or servant, and the father’s sovereignty is exalted; he is the one who holds rights and transmits them."(218)

"By the time humankind reaches the stage of writing its mythology and laws, patriarchy is definitively established: it is males who write the codes. It is natural for them to give woman a subordinate situation; one might imagine, however, that they would consider her with the same benevolence as children and animals. But no. Afraid of woman, legislators organize her oppression. Only the harmful aspects of the ambivalent virtues attributed to her are retained: from sacred she becomes unclean.(...) The Other is passivity confronting activity, diversity breaking down unity, matter opposing form, disorder resisting order. Woman is thus doomed to Evil."(221)

"And yet Evil needs Good, matter needs the idea, and night needs light. Man knows that to satisfy his desires, to perpetuate his existence, woman is indispensable to him; he has to integrate her in society: as long as she submits to the order established by males, she is cleansed of her original stain."(223)

(226) Chapter 3

Beschrijving van de positie van de vrouw in allerlei culturen aan de hand van geschriften etc.

"Once woman is dethroned by the advent of private property, her fate is linked to it for centuries: in large part, her history is intertwined with the history of inheritance.(...) Man will not, therefore, agree to share his property or his children with woman. He will never really be able to go that far, but at a time when patriarchy is powerful, he strips woman of all her rights to hold and transmit property. It seems logical, in fact, to deny her these rights. If it is accepted that a woman’s children do not belong to her, they inevitably have no link with the group the woman comes from. Woman is no longer passed from one clan to another through marriage: she is radically abducted from the group she is born into and annexed to her husband’s; he buys her like a head of cattle or a slave, he imposes his domestic divinities on her: and the children she conceives belong to her spouse’s family. If she could inherit, she would thus wrongly transmit her paternal family’s riches to that of her husband: she is carefully excluded from the succession. But inversely, because she owns nothing, woman is not raised to the dignity of a person; she herself is part of man’s patrimony, first her father’s and then her husband’s. Under a strictly patriarchal regime, a father can condemn to death his male and female children at birth; but in the case of a male child, society most often put limits on this power: a normally constituted newborn male is allowed to live, whereas the custom of exposure is very widespread for girls; there was massive infanticide among Arabs: as soon as they were born, girls were thrown into ditches. Accepting a female child is an act of generosity on the father’s part; the woman enters such societies only through a kind of grace bestowed on her, and not legitimately like males."(228)

"On the contrary, when woman becomes man’s property, he wants a virgin, and he demands total fidelity at the risk of severe penalty; it would be the worst of crimes to risk giving heritage rights to a foreign offspring: this is why the paterfamilias has the right to put a guilty wife to death. As long as private property lasts, conjugal infidelity on the part of a woman is considered a crime of high treason."(230)

"Since the cause of women’s oppression is found in the resolve to perpetuate the family and keep the patrimony intact, if she escapes the family, she escapes this total dependence as well; if society rejects the family by denying private property, woman’s condition improves considerably. Sparta, where community property prevailed, was the only city-state where the woman was treated almost as the equal of man. Girls were brought up like boys; the wife was not confined to her husband’s household; he was only allowed furtive nocturnal visits; and his wife belonged to him so loosely that another man could claim a union with her in the name of eugenics: the very notion of adultery disappears when inheritance disappears; as all the children belonged to the city as a whole, women were not jealously enslaved to a master: or it can be explained inversely, that possessing neither personal wealth nor individual ancestry, the citizen does not possess a woman either. Women underwent the burdens of maternity as men did war: but except for this civic duty, no restraints were put on their freedom."(242)

(259) Chapter 4

"Christian ideology played no little role in women’s oppression. Without a doubt, there is a breath of charity in the Gospels that spread to women as well as to lepers; poor people, slaves, and women are the ones who adhere most passionately to the new law. In the very early days of Christianity, women who submitted to the yoke of the Church were relatively respected; they testified along with men as martyrs; but they could nonetheless worship only in secondary roles; deaconesses were authorized only to do lay work: caring for the sick or helping the poor. And although marriage is considered an institution demanding mutual fidelity, it seems clear that the wife must be totally subordinate to the husband: through Saint Paul the fiercely antifeminist Jewish tradition is affirmed. Saint Paul commands self-effacement and reserve from women; he bases the principle of subordination of women to man on the Old and New Testaments. “The man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man”; and “Neither was man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.” And elsewhere: “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.” In a religion where the flesh is cursed, the woman becomes the devil’s most fearsome temptation." [mijn nadruk] (260)

"In the time of Gregory VI, when celibacy was imposed on priests, woman’s dangerous character was more harshly asserted: all the Fathers of the Church proclaim her wretchedness. Saint Thomas will remain true to this tradition, declaring that woman is only an “occasional” and incomplete being, a sort of failed man." [mijn nadruk] (261)

"This is the tradition that continues into the Middle Ages. The woman is absolutely dependent on her father and husband: during Clovis’s time, the mundium weighs on her throughout her life;* but the Franks rejected Germanic chastity: under the Merovingians and Carolingians polygamy reigns; the woman is married without her consent and can be repudiated by her husband, who holds the right of life or death over her according to his whim. She is treated like a servant. Laws protect her but only inasmuch as she is the man’s property and the mother of his children." [mijn nadruk] (264)

"Once widowed, the woman immediately has to accept a new master."(267)

"The woman sometimes shares the males’ harsh life. As a girl, she excels in all physical exercises, she rides, hunts, hawks; she barely receives any education and is raised with no regard for modesty: she welcomes the château’s guests, takes care of their meals and baths, and she “pleasures” them to sleep; as a woman, she sometimes has to hunt wild animals, undertake long and difficult pilgrimages; when her husband is far away, it is she who defends the seigneury. These ladies of the manor, called viragoes, are admired because they behave exactly like men: they are greedy, treacherous, and cruel, and they tyrannize their vassals."(269)

[Ik denk dat we daar evenmin blij mee moeten zijn. Het maakt me niet uit of dat gedrag bij mannen of bij vrouwen voorkomt, het blijft wat mij betreft slecht gedrag.]

"Such acts remain exceptional, however. Ordinarily, the lady spent her time spinning, praying for the dead, waiting for her spouse, and being bored."(269)

"In common law as in feudal law, the only emancipation is outside marriage; the daughter and the widow have the same capacities as the man; but by marrying, the woman falls under the husband’s guardianship and administration; he can beat her; he watches over her behavior, relations, and correspondence and disposes of her fortune, not through a contract, but by the very fact of marriage. “As soon as the marriage is consummated,” Beaumanoir says, “the possessions of each party are held in common by virtue of the marriage and the man is the guardian of them.” It is in the interest of property that the nobility and the bourgeoisie demand one master to administer it. The wife is not subordinated to the husband because she is judged basically incapable: when nothing else prevents it, woman’s full capacities are recognized. From feudality to today, the married woman is deliberately sacrificed to private property." [mijn nadruk] (274)

"In all these countries, one of the consequences of the “honest wife’s” servitude to the family is prostitution. Hypocritically kept on society’s fringes, prostitutes fill a highly important role. Christianity pours scorn on them but accepts them as a necessary evil. “Getting rid of the prostitutes,” said Saint Augustine, “will trouble society by dissoluteness.” Later, Saint Thomas—or at least the theologian that signed his name to Book IV of De regimine principium—asserted: “Remove public women from society and debauchery will disrupt it by disorder of all kinds. Prostitutes are to a city what a cesspool is to a palace: get rid of the cesspool and the palace will become an unsavory and loathsome place.” In the early Middle Ages, moral license was such that women of pleasure were hardly necessary; but when the bourgeois family became institutionalized and monogamy rigorous, man obviously had to go outside the home for his pleasure." [mijn nadruk] (280)

"In Paris, loose women worked in pens where they arrived in the morning and left after the curfew had tolled; they lived on special streets and did not have the right to stray, and in most other cities brothels were outside town walls. Like Jews, they had to wear distinctive signs on their clothes. In France the most common one was a specific-colored aglet hung on the shoulder; silk, fur, and honest women’s apparel were often prohibited. They were by law taxed with infamy, had no recourse whatsoever to the police and the courts, and could be thrown out of their lodgings on a neighbor’s simple claim. For most of them, life was difficult and wretched. Some were closed up in public houses." [mijn nadruk] (281)

"Many prostitutes lived freely; some of them earned their living well. As in the period of the courtesans, high gallantry provided more possibilities for feminine individualism than the life of an “honest woman.”"(283)

"Altogether, men’s opinion in the Middle Ages is not favorable to women. Courtly poets did exalt love; many codes of courtly love appear, such as André le Chapelain’s poem and the famous Roman de la Rose, in which Guillaume de Lorris encourages young men to devote themselves to the service of ladies. But against this troubadour-inspired literature are pitted bourgeois-inspired writings that cruelly attack women: fabliaux, farces, and plays criticize women for their laziness, coquetry, and lust. Their worst enemies are the clergy."(286)

"It has already been said that the wife’s legal status remained practically unchanged from the early fifteenth century to the nineteenth century; but in the privileged classes her concrete condition does change. The Italian Renaissance is a period of individualism propitious to the burgeoning of strong personalities, regardless of sex. (...) A majority of these distinguished women were courtesans; joining free moral behavior with freethinking, ensuring their economic autonomy through their profession, many were treated by men with deferential admiration; they protected the arts and were interested in literature and philosophy, and they themselves often wrote or painted ... (...) For many of them, though, freedom still takes the form of license: the orgies and crimes of these great Italian ladies and courtesans remain legendary.
This license is also the main freedom found in the following centuries for women whose rank or fortune liberates them from common morality; in general, it remains as strict as in the Middle Ages. As for positive accomplishments, they are possible only for a very few." [mijn nadruk] (291)

[Losbandigheid is voor De Beauvoir blijkbaar geen positieve prestatie. :-) Vrijheden en mogelijkheden voor vrouwen worden door de tijd heen wat groter: van adelijke vrouwen naar actrices naar vrouwen van de hogere burgerij. Voor de 18e eeuw:]

"Once again, for the majority of women, this freedom remains negative and abstract: they limit themselves to the pursuit of pleasure. But those who are intelligent and ambitious create avenues for action for themselves. Salon life once again blossoms: The roles played by Mme Geoffrin, Mme du Deffand, Mlle de Lespinasse, Mme d’Epinay, and Mme de Tencin are well-known; protectors and inspiration, women make up the writer’s favorite audience; they are personally interested in literature, philosophy, and sciences: like Mme Du Châtelet, for example, they have their own physics workshops or chemistry laboratory; they experiment; they dissect; they intervene more actively than ever before in political life: one after the other, Mme de Prie, Mme de Mailly, Mme de Châteauneuf, Mme de Pompadour, and Mme du Barry govern Louis XV; there is barely a minister without his Egeria, to such a point that Montesquieu thinks that in France everything is done by women; they constitute, he says, “a new state within the state”;" [mijn nadruk] (296)

Over vrouwelijke schrijvers:

"even in the nineteenth century they were often obliged to hide; they did not even have a “room of their own”; that is, they did not enjoy material independence, one of the essential conditions for inner freedom."(299)

[Als je dit historische overzicht leest - De Beauvoir zet de zaken tot in detail op een rij, het is indrukwekkend - dan zie je dat er altijd vrouwen én mannen geweest zijn die opkwamen voor de scholing en de ontplooiing van de mogelijkheden van vrouwen, voor de zelfstandige en onafhankelijke positie van vrouwen, en die protesteerden tegen de dominante rol van mannen. Maar dat waren enkelingen en alles wat ze schreven heeft maar een beperkt effect gehad op de algemene verhoudingen tussen mannen en vrouwen: de tegenaanvallen van mannen en vrouwen en vooral van kerkelijke intellectuelen bleven nooit uit en mannen bleven al die eeuwen bepalen hoe vrouwen moesten leven.]

(308) Chapter 5

Ook de Frans Revolutie zette geen zoden aan de dijk voor de rechten van vrouwen.

"The Revolution might have been expected to change the fate of woman. It did nothing of the kind. This bourgeois revolution respected bourgeois institutions and values; and it was waged almost exclusively by men."(308)

Arbeidersvrouwen en vrouwen op het agrarische platteland hadden eigenlijk nog de meeste vrijheid, omdat ze een noodzakelijke rol speelden in de inkomsten van hun gezinnen.

"From within their difficult lives, these women could have asserted themselves as individuals and demanded their rights; but a tradition of timidity and submission weighed on them: the Estates-General cahiers record an insignificant number of feminine claims"(310)

"Thus, while women could have participated in events in spite of their sex, they were prevented by their class, and those from the agitating class were condemned to stand aside because they were women. When economic power falls into the hands of the workers, it will then be possible for the working woman to gain the capacities that the parasitic woman, noble or bourgeois, never obtained.
During the liquidation of the Revolution woman enjoys an anarchic freedom. But when society is reorganized, she is rigidly enslaved again."(312)

In de 19e eeuw verandert er qua rechten van vrouwen nauwelijks iets.

"The freedom of ideas inherited from the eighteenth century never makes inroads into family moral principles; these remain as they are defined by the early-nineteenth-century reactionary thinkers Joseph de Maistre and Bonald. They base the value of order on divine will and demand a strictly hierarchical society; the family, the indissoluble social cell, will be the microcosm of society. “Man is to woman what woman is to the child”; or “power is to the minister what the minister is to the people,” says Bonald. Thus the husband governs, the wife administers, and the children obey. Divorce is, of course, forbidden; and woman is confined to the home." [mijn nadruk] (314)

August Comte heeft even conservatieve opvattingen, net zoals Balzac.

"And in fact, most bourgeois women capitulate. As their education and their parasitic situation make them dependent on men, they never dare to voice their claims: those who do are hardly heard. It is easier to put people in chains than to remove them if the chains bring prestige, said George Bernard Shaw. The bourgeois woman clings to the chains because she clings to her class privileges. It is drilled into her and she believes that women’s liberation would weaken bourgeois society; liberated from the male, she would be condemned to work; while she might regret having her rights to private property subordinated to her husband’s, she would deplore even more having this property abolished; she feels no solidarity with working-class women: she feels closer to her husband than to a woman textile worker. She makes his interests her own.
Yet these obstinate examples of resistance cannot stop the march of history; the advent of the machine ruins landed property and brings about working-class emancipation and concomitantly that of woman."(318)

"With the utopian socialism of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Cabet is born the utopia of the “free woman.”"(318)

Althans in theorie, in de praktijk viel ook dat nogal tegen. Desondanks: het was een ideaal, een streven.

"On the whole, the reform movement that develops in the nineteenth century seeks justice in equality, and is thus generally favorable to feminism. There is one notable exception: Proudhon.(...) Until then, attacks against women had been led by conservatives, bitterly combating socialism as well: Le Charivari was one of the inexhaustible sources of jokes; it is Proudhon who breaks the alliance between feminism and socialism; he protests against the socialist women’s banquet presided over by Leroux, and he fulminates against Jeanne Deroin. In his work Justice, he posits that woman should be dependent on man; man alone counts as a social individual ..." [mijn nadruk] (322)

"But it is not these theoretical debates that influenced the course of events; they only timidly reflected them. Woman regains the economic importance lost since prehistoric times because she escapes the home and plays a new role in industrial production. The machine makes this upheaval possible because the difference in physical force between male and female workers is canceled out in a great number of cases. As this abrupt industrial expansion demands a bigger labor market than male workers can provide, women’s collaboration is necessary. This is the great nineteenth-century revolution that transforms the lot of woman and opens a new era to her. Marx and Engels understand the full impact this will have on women, promising them a liberation brought about by that of the proletariat." [mijn nadruk] (323)

Maar historisch ging dat niet van een leien dakje: vrouwen werden in de werkplaatsen en fabrieken heel slecht betaald en uitgebuit en misbruikt. En vrouwen konden zich vaak niet verweren omdat ze het werk nodig hadden om hun kinderen / gezin te onderhouden.

"While employers warmly welcomed women because of the low wages they accepted, this provoked resistance on the part of male workers. Between the cause of the proletariat and that of women there was no such direct solidarity as Bebel and Engels claimed. The problem was similar to that of the black labor force in the United States. The most oppressed minorities in a society are readily used by the oppressors as a weapon against the class they belong to; thus they at first become enemies, and a deeper consciousness of the situation is necessary so that blacks and whites, women and male workers, form coalitions rather than opposition. It is understandable that male workers at first viewed this cheap competition as an alarming threat and became hostile. It is only when women were integrated into unions that they could defend their own interests and cease endangering those of the working class as a whole." [mijn nadruk] (331)

Toch zijn vrouwen steeds meer gaan deelnemen aan het arbeidsproces, zij het dat per land enorm kan schelen.

"According to one of the last prewar censuses, in France 42 percent of all women between eighteen and sixty worked; in Finland, 37 percent; in Germany, 34.2 percent; in India, 27.7 percent; in England, 26.9 percent; in the Netherlands, 19.2 percent; and in the United States, 17.7 percent."(332)

"One of the basic problems for women, as has been seen, is reconciling the reproductive role and productive work. The fundamental reason that woman, since the beginning of history, has been consigned to domestic labor and prohibited from taking part in shaping the world is her enslavement to the generative function. In female animals there is a rhythm of heat and seasons that ensures the economy of their energies; nature, on the contrary, between puberty and menopause, places no limits on women’s gestation." [mijn nadruk] (332)

Allerlei vormen van geboorteregeling maken vrouwen vrijer. Dat is een ontwikkeling die steeds meer doorzet.

"As for abortion, it is nowhere officially authorized by law.(...) It was Christianity that overturned moral ideas on this point by endowing the embryo with a soul; so abortion became a crime against the fetus itself."(335-336)

[Dat eerste ligt tegenwoordig wel anders. Dat laatste - de grote invloed van religie - speelt nog steeds een grote rol. ]

"These changes have tremendous importance for woman in particular; she can reduce the number of pregnancies and rationally integrate them into her life, instead of being their slave."(339)

Desondanks duurde het in veel landen eindeloos lang voordat vrouwen stemrecht kregen. In Frankrijk werden door tegenstanders weer alle bekende argumenten van stal gehaald:

"Until 1932 delaying procedures are used by the majority, which refuses to discuss bills concerning women’s suffrage; nevertheless, in 1932, the Chamber having voted the women’s voting and eligibility amendment, 319 votes to 1, the Senate opens a debate extending over several sessions: the amendment is voted down. The record in L’officiel is of great importance; all the antifeminist arguments developed over half a century are found in the report, which fastidiously lists all the works in which they are mentioned. First of all come these types of gallantry arguments: we love women too much to let them vote; the “real woman” who accepts the “housewife or courtesan” dilemma is exalted in true Proudhon fashion; woman would lose her charm by voting; she is on a pedestal and should not step down from it; she has everything to lose and nothing to gain in becoming a voter; she governs men without needing a ballot; and so on. More serious objections concern the family’s interest: woman’s place is in the home; political discussions would bring about disagreement between spouses. Some admit to moderate antifeminism. Women are different from men. They do not serve in the military. Will prostitutes vote? And others arrogantly affirm male superiority: voting is a duty and not a right; women are not worthy of it. They are less intelligent and educated than men. If women voted, men would become effeminate. Women lacked political education. They would vote according to their husbands’ wishes. If they want to be free, they should first free themselves from their dressmakers. Also proposed is that superbly naive argument: there are more women in France than men. In spite of the flimsiness of all these objections, French women would have to wait until 1945 to acquire political power." [mijn nadruk] (347)

[Schokkend, die 'argumenten'. Maar mooi op een rij gezet en bijzonder leerzaam. Ook de situatie in de Sowjet-Unie van indertijd is bijzonder leerzaam. Je kunt er aan zien dat veel westerlingen wat te gemakkelijk zijn met al hun kritiek op het communisme. Ik citeer het helemaal:]

"In Soviet Russia the feminist movement made the greatest advances. It began at the end of the nineteenth century among women students of the intelligentsia; they were less attached to their personal cause than to revolutionary action in general; they “went to the people” and used nihilistic methods against the Okhrana: in 1878 Vera Zasulich shot the police chief Trepov. During the Russo-Japanese War, women replaced men in many areas of work; their consciousness raised, the Russian Union for Women’s rights demanded political equality of the sexes; in the first Duma, a parliamentary women’s rights group was created, but it was powerless. Women workers’ emancipation would come from the revolution. Already in 1905, they were actively participating in the mass political strikes that broke out in the country, and they mounted the barricades. On March 8, 1917, International Women’s Day and a few days before the revolution, they massively demonstrated in the streets of St. Petersburg demanding bread, peace, and their husbands’ return. They took part in the October insurrection; between 1918 and 1920, they played an important economic and even military role in the U.S.S.R.’s fight against the invaders. True to Marxist tradition, Lenin linked women’s liberation to that of the workers; he gave them political and economic equality.

Article 122 of the 1936 constitution stipulates: “In the U.S.S.R., woman enjoys the same rights as man in all aspects of economic, official, cultural, public, and political life.” And these principles were spelled out by the Communist International. It demands “social equality of man and woman before the law and in daily life. Radical transformation in conjugal rights and in the family code. Recognition of maternity as a social function. Entrusting society with the care and education of children and adolescents. Organization of a civil effort against ideology and traditions that make woman a slave.” In the economic area, woman’s conquests were stunning. She obtained equal wages with male workers, and she took on a highly active role in production; thereby gaining considerable political and social importance. The brochure recently published by the Association France-U.S.S.R. reports that in the 1939 general elections there were 457,000 women deputies in the regional, district, town, and village soviets; 1,480 in the socialist republics of higher soviets, and 227 seated in the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. Close to 10 million are members of unions. They constitute 40 percent of the population of U.S.S.R. workers and employees, and a great number of workers among the Stakhanovites are women. The role of Russian women in the last war is well-known; they provided an enormous labor force even in production branches where masculine professions are dominant: metallurgy and mining, timber rafting and railways, and so forth. They distinguished themselves as pilots and parachutists, and they formed partisan armies.

This participation of woman in public life has raised a difficult problem: her role in family life. For a long while, means were sought to free her from her domestic constraints: on November 16, 1942, the plenary assembly of the Comintern proclaimed, “The revolution is impotent as long as the notion of family and family relations subsists.” Respect for free unions, liberalization of divorce, and legalization of abortion ensured woman’s liberty relative to men; laws for maternity leave, child-care centers, kindergartens, and so on lightened the burdens of motherhood. From passionate and contradictory witness reports, it is difficult to discern what woman’s concrete situation really was; what is sure is that today the demands of repopulation have given rise to a different family policy: the family has become the elementary social cell, and woman is both worker and housekeeper.7 Sexual morality is at its strictest; since the law of June 1936, reinforced by that of June 7, 1941, abortion has been banned and divorce almost suppressed; adultery is condemned by moral standards. Strictly subordinated to the state like all workers, strictly bound to the home, but with access to political life and the dignity that productive work gives, the Russian woman is in a singular situation that would be worth studying in its singularity; circumstances unfortunately prevent me from doing this."(356-360)

Een terugblik op de geschiedenis en wat die heeft opgeleverd.

"Men tend to exaggerate the scope of this influence when trying to convince woman she has the greater role; but in fact feminine voices are silenced when concrete action begins; they might foment wars, not suggest battle tactics; they oriented politics only inasmuch as politics was limited to intrigue: the real reins of the world have never been in women’s hands; they had no role either in technology or in economy, they neither made nor unmade states, they did not discover worlds. They did set off some events: but they were pretexts more than agents." [mijn nadruk] (366)

"As Christine de Pizan, Poulain de la Barre, Condorcet, John Stuart Mill, and Stendhal stated, women have never been given their chances in any area."(369)

"How could the Cinderella myth not retain its validity? Everything still encourages the girl to expect fortune and happiness from a “Prince Charming” instead of attempting the difficult and uncertain conquest alone. For example, she can hope to attain a higher caste through him, a miracle her whole life’s work will not bring her. But such a hope is harmful because it divides her strength and interests; this split is perhaps the most serious handicap for woman. Parents still raise their daughters for marriage rather than promoting their personal development; and the daughter sees so many advantages that she desires it herself; the result is that she is often less specialized, less solidly trained than her brothers, she is less totally committed to her profession; as such, she is doomed to remain inferior in it; and the vicious circle is knotted: this inferiority reinforces her desire to find a husband."(377)

"Men’s economic privilege, their social value, the prestige of marriage, the usefulness of masculine support—all these encourage women to ardently want to please men. They are on the whole still in a state of serfdom. It follows that woman knows and chooses herself not as she exists for herself but as man defines her. She thus has to be described first as men dream of her since her being-for-men is one of the essential factors of her concrete condition."(378)

(382) | Part three | Myths

(382) Chapter 1

[Een soort peinzen over de man en de vrouw-als-de-Ander volgt hier, maar ik vind wat ze over mannen schrijft - afgezien dan van de dominantie tegenover vrouwen - nogal aanvechtbaar of achterhaald. Ik denk bijvoorbeeld niet dat de notie dat mannen altijd het gevaar en de strijd zoeken zo relevant is hier of per se bij man-zijn hoort. Het vervelende is dat ze de hele tijd historische of antropologische bronnen aanhaalt, zodat mijn reactie steeds zoiets is als: ja misschien was het tweeduizend jaar geleden zo of was het in de achterlanden van Nieuw-Guinea zo, maar hoe is het nu? Bovendien maakt ze op die manier van ALLE mannen een jager en van ALLE vrouwen een prooi. ]

"Perhaps the myth of woman will be phased out one day: the more women assert themselves as human beings, the more the marvelous quality of Other dies in them. But today it still exists in the hearts of all men.
Any myth implies a Subject who projects its hopes and fears of a transcendent heaven. Not positing themselves as Subject, women have not created the virile myth that would reflect their projects; they have neither religion nor poetry that belongs to them alone: they still dream through men’s dreams. They worship the gods made by males. And males have shaped the great virile figures for their own exaltation: Hercules, Prometheus, Parsifal; in the destiny of these heroes, woman has merely a secondary role. Undoubtedly, there are stylized images of man as he is in his relations with woman: father, seducer, husband, the jealous one, the good son, the bad son; but men are the ones who have established them, and they have not attained the dignity of myth; they are barely more than clichés, while woman is exclusively defined in her relation to man. The asymmetry of the two categories, male and female, can be seen in the unilateral constitution of sexual myths." [mijn nadruk] (389)

[Dat bedoel ik. Dit generaliseert enorm. Is het nu zo zinvol om in termen van mythen over mannen en vrouwen te schrijven? Het is inmiddels toch duidelijk dat allerlei opvattingen over vrouwen niet deugen?]

"It is always difficult to describe a myth; it does not lend itself to being grasped or defined; it haunts consciousnesses without ever being posited opposite them as a fixed object. The object fluctuates so much and is so contradictory that its unity is not at first discerned: Delilah and Judith, Aspasia and Lucretia, Pandora and Athena, woman is both Eve and the Virgin Mary. She is an idol, a servant, source of life, power of darkness; she is the elementary silence of truth, she is artifice, gossip, and lies; she is the medicine woman and witch; she is man’s prey; she is his downfall, she is everything he is not and wants to have, his negation and his raison d’être." [mijn nadruk] (390)

"In all civilizations and still today, she inspires horror in man: the horror of his own carnal contingence that he projects on her. The girl who has not yet gone through puberty does not pose a threat; she is not the object of any taboo and has no sacred characteristics. In many primitive societies her sex even seems innocent: erotic games between boys and girls are allowed in childhood. Woman becomes impure the day she might be able to procreate. In primitive societies the strict taboos concerning girls on the day of their first period have often been described; even in Egypt, where the woman is treated with particular respect, she remains confined during her whole menstrual period." [mijn nadruk] (401)

[Die vijandigheid tegenover vrouwen en hun lichaam is er, dat is zeker. Maar de door De Beauvoir gegeven verklaringen zijn erg aanvechtbaar. Waarom zouden vrouwenlichamen mannen een gevoel van vergankelijkheid geven waar hij niet aan wil? Dat lijkt me onzinnig gespeculeer. Veel van de beschreven maatregelen rondom menstruatie hebben alleen maar met machtsuitoefening te maken. Mannen willen de baas zijn over vrouwen, dus zoeken ze overal stokken om mee te slaan. Maar de keuze valt liefst op die punten waar een vrouw moeilijk omheen kan zoals menstruatie, zwangerschap, bevalling, zogen. Dat is bijvoorbeeld ook de reden waarom racisme tegenover mensen met een andere huiskleur zo laag is: iemand met een donkere huidskleur kan niet om dat gegeven heen. Iemand benadelen op kenmerken waar hij of zij niet om heen kan, dat is het meest gemene wat er is.]

[Maar wat je in al die verhalen van De Beauvoir hier ook ziet is simpelweg onwetendheid. Mensen zagen samenhangen en invloeden die er niet waren. Je bezweert de angst voor wat je niet weet met allerlei onzinnige maatregelen als een soort van fluiten in het donker.]

"Man does not merely seek in the sexual act subjective and ephemeral pleasure. He wants to conquer, take, and possess; to have a woman is to conquer her; he penetrates her as the plowshare in the furrows; he makes her his as he makes his the earth he is working: he plows, he plants, he sows: these images are as old as writing; from antiquity to today a thousand examples can be mentioned." [mijn nadruk] (410)

[Hier wordt weer lekker gegeneralizeerd over mannen. Historisch misschien juist, maar in het heden?]

"Man’s hesitation between fear and desire, between the terror of being possessed by uncontrollable forces and the will to overcome them, is grippingly reflected in the virginity myths."(411)

[Waarom zouden mannen angst voelen bij de lichamelijke fenomenen van vrouwen? Het is een te simpele 'bang ben je voor wat je niet kent' - redenering. Misschien voelen ze wel weerzin, of wat ook. Ook bij maagdelijkheid gaat het om machtsuitoefening.]

"But not just any woman can play the role of mediator between man and the world; man is not satisfied with finding sexual organs complementary to his own in his partner. She must embody the wondrous blossoming of life while concealing its mysterious disturbances at the same time. First of all, she has to have youth and health, for man cannot be enraptured in his embrace of a living thing unless he forgets that all life is inhabited by death. And he desires still more: that his beloved be beautiful. The ideal of feminine beauty is variable; but some requirements remain constant; one of them is that since woman is destined to be possessed, her body has to provide the inert and passive qualities of an object."(420)

[Als voorbeeld van dat er nu toch wel erg gemakkelijk van alles gesteld wordt. Willen mannen allemaal alleen maar jeugd en schoonheid? Willen vrouwen dat niet? En waarom willen mannen en vrouwen dat wel of niet? Niet omdat mannen bang zijn voor de dood, lijkt me. En wat heeft het met de eigenschappen van een object te maken? Dit is ergerlijk vaag vaag vaag.]

"Old and ugly women not only are objects without assets but also provoke hatred mixed with fear. They embody the disturbing figure of Mother, while the charms of the Wife have faded away."(426)

[Alsof het omgekeerde niet geldt ... ]

"What man thus cherishes and detests first in woman, lover as well as mother, is the fixed image of her animal destiny, the life essential to her existence, but that condemns her to finitude and death. From the day of birth, man begins to die: this is the truth that the mother embodies."(437)

"As the woman’s desire is not quenched, she imprisons her lover between her legs, and he feels in spite of himself his desire returning: she is thus an enemy power who grabs his virility, and while possessing her again, he bites her throat so deeply that he kills her. The cycle from mother to woman-lover to death meanders to a complex close."(439)

[Wat een geklets. Ik ga als vanzelf sneller door de tekst heen ...]

"Man succeeded in enslaving woman, but in doing so, he robbed her of what made possession desirable. Integrated into the family and society, woman’s magic fades rather than transfigures itself; reduced to a servant’s condition, she is no longer the wild prey incarnating all of nature’s treasures. Since the birth of courtly love, it has been a commonplace that marriage kills love. Either too scorned, too respected, or too quotidian, the wife is no longer a sex object."(483)

[Dit hoofdstuk vind ik bijzonder slaapverwekkend en volkomen zinloos. Ik ben al overtuigd, ik hoef niet nog méér overtuigd te worden met ellenlange vage verhalen. Zo jammer. Ja, dat was de beeldvorming, of is het nog, we weten het nu wel. De belangrijke vraag is: hoe kunnen we het anders doen? Dat lijkt me toch belangrijker dan het continue benadrukken van de aloude verhoudingen tussen mannen en vrouwen.]

(512) Chapter 2

"In order to confirm this analysis of the feminine myth, as it is collectively presented, we will look at the singular and syncretic form it takes on in certain writers. The attitude to women seems typical in, among others, Montherlant, D. H. Lawrence, Claudel, Breton, and Stendhal."(512)

[Nog meer analyses van de beeldvorming van mannen en vrouwen. Dit sla ik over. ]

(630) Chapter 3

"The myth of woman plays a significant role in literature; but what is its importance in everyday life? To what extent does it affect individual social customs and behavior? To reply to this question, we will need to specify the relation of this myth to reality."(630)

"Of all these myths, none is more anchored in masculine hearts than the feminine “mystery.” It has numerous advantages. And first it allows an easy explanation for anything that is inexplicable; the man who does not “understand” a woman is happy to replace his subjective deficiency with an objective resistance; instead of admitting his ignorance, he recognizes the presence of a mystery exterior to himself: here is an excuse that flatters his laziness and vanity at the same time."(636)

"Furthermore, like all oppressed people, woman deliberately dissimulates her objective image; slave, servant, indigent, all those who depend upon a master’s whims have learned to present him with an immutable smile or an enigmatic impassivity; they carefully hide their real feelings and behavior. Woman is also taught from adolescence to lie to men, to outsmart, to sidestep them. She approaches them with artificial expressions; she is prudent, hypocritical, playacting."(642)

[Het wordt er in deze sectie helaas niet beter op. Het lijkt wel of Sartre hier aan het praten is, ze schrijft het soort abstracte generalizeringen over mensen waar ik al gauw een hekel aan krijg omdat er van alles beweerd wordt wat niet toetsbaar is.]

(650) VOLUME TWO - LIVED EXPERIENCE

(651) Introduction

"Women of today are overthrowing the myth of femininity; they are beginning to affirm their independence concretely; but their success in living their human condition completely does not come easily. As they are brought up by women, in the heart of a feminine world, their normal destiny is marriage, which still subordinates them to man from a practical point of view; virile prestige is far from being eradicated: it still stands on solid economic and social bases. It is thus necessary to study woman’s traditional destiny carefully. What I will try to describe is how woman is taught to assume her condition, how she experiences this, what universe she finds herself enclosed in, and what escape mechanisms are permitted her. Only then can we understand what problems women — heirs to a weighty past, striving to forge a new future — are faced with." [mijn nadruk] (651)

"There is no question of expressing eternal truths here, but of describing the common ground from which all singular feminine existence stems."(651)

[Wonderlijke bewering. 'Ik wil geen eeuwige waarheden verkondigen, maar ik zal wel de gemeenschappelijke grond beschrijven etc'. Maar dat laatste kan alleen gedaan worden in beweringen. En zijn die beweringen dan niet waar, of waar voor de een en onwaar voor de ander? Nee, je wil dat je beweringen waar zijn voor iedereen. Daar ga je vanuit. Waarom doe je anders al die moeite? Maar je kunt je vergissen, je kunt fouten maken, etc. Maar zelf ga je er vanuit dat je de waarheid spreekt. Anderen wijzen je er dan wel op dat je je vergist. Hoe dan ook betekent het dat je je beweringen zo overtuigend mogelijk moet onderbouwen.]

(652) Part one | Formative years

(652) Chapter 1 - Childhood

"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."(652)

[De beginzin is een miljoen keer geciteerd, geloof ik. De slotzin is raar, vind ik. Het is trouwens een algemeen iets: vrouwen worden gevormd tot vrouw, mannen worden gevormd tot man. Het gebruik van "hij" is juist in de hiernavolgende beschrijvingen van de ontwikkeling van kinderen erg verwarrend.]

"Up to twelve, the girl is just as sturdy as her brothers; she shows the same intellectual aptitudes; she is not barred from competing with them in any area. If well before puberty and sometimes even starting from early childhood she already appears sexually specified, it is not because mysterious instincts immediately destine her to passivity, coquetry, or motherhood but because the intervention of others in the infant’s life is almost originary, and her vocation is imperiously breathed into her from the first years of her life."(653)

[Dat lijkt me ook. De beschrijving zijn overigens duidelijk uit een tijd dat vaders zich niet met borelingen bemoeiden en de moeder alles deed.]

[Ik houd niet erg van dat psychologiserende taalgebruik waarmee als het ware de ervaring van het kind beschreven wordt. Ze wisselt dat af met beschrijvingen van buiten af / observaties die ik veel wetenschappelijker vind omdat ze in principe controleerbaar zijn. Hoe kleine kinderen zich van binnen voelen is moeilijk te zeggen. Een voorbeeld:]

"That is why so many children are afraid of growing up; they desperately want their parents to continue taking them on their laps, taking them into their bed ... " [mijn nadruk] (657)

"It is here that little girls first appear privileged. A second weaning, slower and less brutal than the first one, withdraws the mother’s body from the child’s embraces; but little by little boys are the ones who are denied kisses and caresses; the little girl continues to be doted upon, she is allowed to hide behind her mother’s skirts, her father takes her on his knees and pats her hair; she is dressed in dresses as lovely as kisses, her tears and whims are treated indulgently, her hair is done carefully, her expressions and affectations amuse: physical contact and complaisant looks protect her against the anxiety of solitude. For the little boy, on the other hand, even affectations are forbidden; his attempts at seduction, his games irritate. “A man doesn’t ask for kisses … A man doesn’t look at himself in the mirror … A man doesn’t cry,” he is told. He has to be “a little man”; he obtains adults’ approbation by freeing himself from them. He will please by not seeming to seek to please." [mijn nadruk] (657)

[Het bekende beeld van hoe de rolverdeling ontstaat. Inmiddels weten we dat dit verschil nog veel vroeger ontstaat dan hier beschreven wordt. Jongensbaby's worden al minder opgepakt dan meisjesbaby's.]

"However, if the boy at first seems less favored than his sisters, it is because there are greater designs for him. The requirements he is subjected to immediately imply a higher estimation.(...) The child is persuaded that more is demanded of boys because of their superiority; the pride of his virility is breathed into him in order to encourage him in this difficult path; this abstract notion takes on a concrete form for him: it is embodied in the penis ... " [mijn nadruk] (659)

[Die laatste zin is overbodig en onzinnig. Je hoeft die 'training in mannelijkheid' helemaal niet te koppelen aan een geslachtsorgaan. Dat is wat Freud deed, het is jammer dat - zo blijkt uit de voetnoten - De Beauvoir hier toch weer kritiekloos de ideeën van de psychoanalyse accepteert, ze haalt de ene na de andere psychoanalytische auteur van stal. Die nadruk op de biologie is ontzettend overdreven en dommig. Het is veel meer een overdracht van waarden en normen die maatschappelijk aanvaard zijn en ook niet zo gemakkelijk veranderd kunnen worden.]

"From then on, he will embody his transcendence and his arrogant sovereignty in his sex."(660)

[Ja, hoor ... Nee, dus. Te simpel.]

"She does not experience this absence as a lack; her body is evidently a plenitude for her; but she finds herself in the world differently from the boy; and a group of factors can transform this difference into inferiority in her eyes."(661)

[En ... hup ... we zitten meteen weer na te denken over castratiecomplexen en penisnijd. Zittend plassen leidt bij vrouwen tot schaamte. Wat een tijdverlies.]

"Because he recognizes himself in an alter ego, the little boy can boldly assume his subjectivity; the very object in which he alienates himself becomes a symbol of autonomy, transcendence, and power: he measures the size of his penis; he compares his urinary stream with that of his friends; later, erection and ejaculation will be sources of satisfaction and challenge. 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 is handed a foreign object: a doll."(672)

[Zoals al in Deel I beschreven. Wat een onzinnig gezeur toch. ]

"All children try to compensate for the separation of weaning by seductive and attention-seeking behavior; the boy is forced to go beyond this stage, he is saved from his narcissism by turning his attention to his penis, whereas the girl is reinforced in this tendency to make herself object, which is common to all children. The doll helps her, but it does not have a determining role; the boy can also treasure a teddy bear or a rag doll on whom he can project himself; it is in their life’s overall form that each factor — penis, doll — takes on its importance. Thus, the passivity that essentially characterizes the “feminine” woman is a trait that develops in her from her earliest years."(674)

[Zucht.]

"One of the woman’s curses — as Michelet has justly pointed out — is that in her childhood she is left in the hands of women. The boy is also brought up by his mother in the beginning; but she respects his maleness and he escapes from her relatively quickly, whereas the mother wants to integrate the girl into the feminine world."(677)

[Ja, maar dat heeft niet te maken met het al of niet hebben van een penis, maar heeft te maken met waarden en normen.]

"Thus, women given the care of a little girl are bent on transforming her into women like themselves with zeal and arrogance mixed with resentment. And even a generous mother who sincerely wants the best for her child will, as a rule, think it wiser to make a “true woman” of her, as that is the way she will be best accepted by society."(677)

"The mother seems endowed with wonderful fairy powers. Many boys bemoan that such a privilege is denied them; if, later, they take eggs from nests, stamp on young plants, if they destroy life around them with a kind of rage, it is out of revenge at not being able to hatch life, while the little girl is enchanted with the thought of creating it one day."(686)

[Tjonge, de oorzakelijke samenhangen die hier zo maar even gelegd worden. Dus een jongen is destructief omdat hij geen leven kan voortbrengen. Dát zal het zijn ... In de beschrijvingen die volgen over rolverdelingen geeft De Beauvoir uiteraard de situatie weer in de vijfiger jaren en in de milieus die ze kent. Wat ik lees lijkt me totaal verouderd en niet meer iets van deze tijd. Althans: niet zo zwart-wit als vroeger.]

"It is implicitly as men that grandfathers, older brothers, uncles, girlfriends’ fathers, friends of the family, professors, priests, or doctors fascinate a little girl. The emotional consideration that adult women show the Man would be enough to perch him on a pedestal.
Everything helps to confirm this hierarchy in the little girl’s eyes. Her historical and literary culture, the songs and legends she is raised on, are an exaltation of the man.(...) Children’s literature, mythology, tales, and stories reflect the myths created by men’s pride and desires: the little girl discovers the world and reads her destiny through the eyes of men. Male superiority is overwhelming ... (...) In contemporary accounts as in ancient legends, the man is the privileged hero.(...) If the little girl reads the newspapers, if she listens to adult conversation, she notices that today, as in the past, men lead the world."(691-694)

[Precies, zo gaat dat, zo worden waarden en normen overgedragen, zo worden vrouwen en mannen gemaakt. Dit is de De Beauvoir die het helder maakt. Psychoanalytisch geklets helpt niks. Deze beschrijvingen wel.]

"The child can also discover it in other ways: everything encourages her to abandon herself in dreams to the arms of men to be transported to a sky of glory. She learns that to be happy, she has to be loved; to be loved, she has to await love. Woman is Sleeping Beauty, Donkey Skin, Cinderella, Snow White, the one who receives and endures. In songs and tales, the young man sets off to seek the woman; he fights against dragons, he combats giants; she is locked up in a tower, a palace, a garden, a cave, chained to a rock, captive, put to sleep: she is waiting."(697)

"The supreme necessity for woman is to charm a masculine heart; this is the recompense all heroines aspire to, even if they are intrepid, adventuresome; and only their beauty is asked of them in most cases. It is thus understandable that attention to her physical appearance can become a real obsession for the little girl; princesses or shepherds, one must always be pretty to conquer love and happiness; ugliness is cruelly associated with meanness, and when one sees the misfortunes that befall ugly girls, one does not know if it is their crimes or their disgrace that destiny punishes. Young beauties promised a glorious future often start out in the role of victim; the story of Geneviève de Brabant or of Griselda are not as innocent as it would seem; love and suffering are intertwined in a troubling way; woman is assured of the most delicious triumphs when falling to the bottom of abjection; whether it be a question of God or a man, the little girl learns that by consenting to the most serious renunciations, she will become all-powerful: she takes pleasure in a masochism that promises her supreme conquests. Saint Blandine, white and bloody in the paws of lions, Snow White lying as if dead in a glass coffin, Sleeping Beauty, Atala fainting, a whole cohort of tender heroines beaten, passive, wounded, on their knees, humiliated, teach their younger sisters the fascinating prestige of martyred, abandoned, and resigned beauty." [mijn nadruk] (698-699)

"Their malaise expresses itself in impatience, tantrums, tears; they indulge in tears — an indulgence many women keep later — largely because they love to play the victim: it is both a protest against the harshness of their destiny and a way of endearing themselves to others."(709)

"The sphere she belongs to is closed everywhere, limited, dominated by the male universe: as high as she climbs, as far as she dares go, there will always be a ceiling over her head, walls that block her path. Man’s gods are in such a faraway heaven that in truth, for him, there are no gods: the little girl lives among gods with a human face."(710)

"Because she is woman, the girl knows that the sea and the poles, a thousand adventures, a thousand joys, are forbidden to her: she is born on the wrong side."(711)

[Het zijn mooie uitspraken, maar het vervelende is dat het niet ophoudt. En dan slaat ze op een gegeven moment weer door in generalisaties met een hoop gepsychologiseer. Zoals hier: ]

"The reassurance offered by grown-ups leaves the child worried; growing up, she learns not to trust the word of adults; often it is on the very mysteries of her conception that she has caught them in lies; and she also knows that they consider the most frightening things normal; if she has ever experienced a violent physical shock — tonsils removed, tooth pulled, whitlow lanced — she will project the remembered anxiety onto childbirth."(714)

"How to go from the image of dressed and dignified people, these people who teach decency, reserve, and reason, to that of naked beasts confronting each other? Here is a contradiction that shakes their pedestal, darkens the sky. Often the child stubbornly refuses the odious revelation."(718)

[Dat zijn weer een hoop beweringen waarbij ik me afvraag waarop De Beauvoir die baseert. Eigen waarneming bij zichzelf en bij kennissen uit dezelfde bemiddelde milieus? Weer eens psychoanalytische auteurs? Of degelijke wetenschappelijk onderzoek?]

"What adds to the little girl’s anxiety is that she cannot discern the exact shape of the equivocal curse that weighs on her. The information she gets is inconsistent, books are contradictory; even technical explanations do not dissipate the heavy shadow; a hundred questions arise: Is the sexual act painful? Or delicious? How long does it last? Five minutes or all night? Sometimes you read that a woman became a mother with one embrace, and sometimes you remain sterile after hours of sexual activity. Do people “do that” every day? Or rarely? The child tries to learn more by reading the Bible, consulting dictionaries, asking friends, and he gropes in darkness and disgust."(719)

"It should be said that even coherent instruction would not resolve the problem; in spite of the best will of parents and teachers, the sexual experience could not be put into words and concepts; it could only be understood by living it; all analysis, however serious, will have a comic side and will fail to deliver the truth."(723)

[Tja, in de bijbel zul je het niet vinden ... Hoe komt ze er op? Alsof de hele wereld de bijbel kent en leest. Ik ben het ook niet zo eens met het afwijzen van goed geïnformeerd zijn zoals zij hierboven doet: de angsten die zij beschrijft worden alleen maar groter en waarschijnlijker zonder goede informatie (over seksualiteit bijvoorbeeld), al is de kunst om informatie zo te geven dat het geen andere angsten oproept. En over die andere vragen kan natuurlijk ook informatie gegeven worden, zoals vandaag de dag ook steeds meer gebeurt.]

"How would one explain the pleasure of a caress or a kiss to a dispassionate child? Kisses are given and received in a family way, sometimes even on the lips: Why do these mucus exchanges in certain encounters provoke dizziness? It is like describing colors to the blind. As long as there is no intuition of the excitement and desire that give the sexual function its meaning and unity, the different elements seem shocking and monstrous. In particular, the little girl is revolted when she understands that she is virgin and sealed, and that to change into a woman a man’s sex must penetrate her. Since exhibitionism is a widespread perversion, many little girls have seen the penis in an erection; in any case, they have observed the sexual organs of animals, and it is unfortunate that the horse’s so often draws their attention; one imagines that they would be frightened by it. Fear of childbirth, fear of the male sex organ, fear of the “crises” that threaten married couples, disgust for dirty practices, derision for actions devoid of signification, all of this often leads a young girl to declare: “I will never marry.” Therein lies the surest defense against pain, folly, and obscenity. It is useless to try to explain that when the day comes, neither deflowering nor childbirth would seem so terrible, that millions of women resign themselves to it and are none the worse for it." [mijn nadruk] (724)

"What is happening in this troubled period is that the child’s body is becoming a woman’s body and being made flesh. Except in the case of glandular deficiency where the subject remains fixed in the infantile stage, the puberty crisis begins around the age of twelve or thirteen. This crisis begins much earlier for girls than for boys, and it brings about far greater changes. The little girl approaches it with worry and displeasure. As her breasts and body hair develop, a feeling is born that sometimes changes into pride, but begins as shame; suddenly the child displays modesty, she refuses to show herself nude, even to her sisters or her mother, she inspects herself with surprise mixed with horror ... " [mijn nadruk] (729)

[Het is weer een hoop gepsychologiseer. Waarop zijn dit soort beweringen gebaseerd? zo vraag ik me opnieuw af. Ik zie verwijzingen naar romans, naar opmerkingen van vrouwen die ze sprak, naar anecdotes. Ik zie geen wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Natuurlijk kunnen al die veranderingen allerlei emoties oproepen. Maar waarom 'worry and displeasure', 'shame', 'horror', waarom verderop 'struggle and suffering'? Waarom is het vervelend als er voortaan meer naar je gekeken wordt door mannen? Ik denk dat dat allemaal erg afhangt van de cultuur en samenleving, hoe er in de opvoeding over die ontwikkeling wordt gepraat, van reacties met vriendinnen. Ik geloof geen bal van die 'natuurlijke schaamte' die hier weer eens geëtaleerd wordt.]

"This disgust is expressed in many young girls by the desire to lose weight: they do not want to eat anymore; if they are forced, they vomit; they watch their weight incessantly. Others become pathologically shy; entering a room or going out on the street becomes a torture. From these experiences, psychoses sometimes develop."(731)

[Ook weer oppervlakkig. De invloed van de beeldvorming in tijdschriften en zo wordt niet eens besproken.]

"Very often the parents’ attitude contributes to inculcating shame in the little girl for her physical appearance."(734)

[Precies , dat lijkt me belangrijker.]

"Sometimes, in prepuberty preceding the arrival of her period, the girl does not yet feel disgust for her body; she is proud of becoming a woman, she eagerly awaits her maturing breasts, she pads her blouse with handkerchiefs and brags around her older sisters; she does not yet grasp the meaning of the phenomena taking place in her. Her first period exposes this meaning, and feelings of shame appear. If they existed already, they are confirmed and magnified from this moment on. All the accounts agree: whether or not the child has been warned, the event always appears repugnant and humiliating. The mother very often neglected to warn her;" [mijn nadruk] (736)

[De eerste opmerking is in strijd met wat hiervoor werd beschreven. Nu is de menstruatie ineens de schaamteverwekker. "All accounts agree"? Welke verhalen? En dan die opmerking dat de moeders er niet over voorlichten. Geen wonder dat zo'n meisje niet weet wat haar overkomt. Het lijkt me heel veel uitmaken of een meisje op de hoogte is of niet, ik kan me niet anders voorstellen. Maar waar is hier het wetenschappelijk onderzoek? Geen idee. De Beauvoir komt de hele tijd met psychoanalici en romans aanzetten.]

"According to Klein and the English psychoanalytic school, blood is for the young girl the manifestation of a wound of the internal organs. Even if cautious advice saves her from excessive anxiety, she is ashamed, she feels dirty: she rushes to the sink, she tries to wash or hide her dirtied underwear."(737)

[Idem. Er is op deze manier toch maar weinig over van de uitspraak op p. 652 dat je niet als vrouw wordt geboren, maar een vrouw wordt door de beschaving om je heen. Ze komt de hele tijd met de biologische oorzaken op de proppen waarvoor ook psychoanalytici zo'n voorliefde hebben. Met andere woorden: hoe je als vrouw wordt geboren. Het klinkt erg deterministisch ook. Maatschappelijke samenhangen komen nauwelijks ter sprake.]

"Things happen in a similar way for most little girls. Many of them are horrified at the idea of sharing their secret with those around them. A friend told me that, motherless, she lived between her father and a primary school teacher and spent three months in fear and shame, hiding her stained underwear before it was discovered that she had begun menstruating." [mijn nadruk] (740)

[Idem. Een bewering waarvan je je afvraagt of die klopt met als enige onderbouwing "een vriendin vertelde me dat". Het puriteinse van het milieu dat ze kent wordt voor het gemak maar even vergeten. ]

"But this is not only about being in a bad mood; most mothers fail to give the child the necessary explanations, and so she is full of anxiety before this new state brought about by the first menstruation crisis: she wonders if the future does not hold other painful surprises for her; or else she imagines that from now on she could become pregnant by the simple presence or contact with a man, and she feels real terror of males. Even if she is spared these anxieties by intelligent explanations, she is not so easily granted peace of mind." [mijn nadruk] (741)

[Uiteraard maakt geïnformeerd zijn enorm veel uit. Ik vind dat echt een open deur. Het haalt haar hele stelling van ervoor onderuit. De laatste zin hier moet dat blijkbaar redden. "not so easily"? Vaag.]

"But the girl is soon disappointed because she sees that she has not gained any privilege and that life follows its normal course. The only novelty is the disgusting event repeated monthly; there are children that cry for hours when they learn they are condemned to this destiny; what adds to their revolt is that this shameful defect is known by men as well: what they would like is that the humiliating feminine condition at least be shrouded in mystery for them. But no, father, brothers, cousins, men know and even joke about it sometimes. This is when the shame of her too carnal body is born or exacerbated. And once the first surprise has passed, the monthly unpleasantness does not fade away at all: each time, the girl finds the same disgust when faced by this unappetizing and stagnant odor that comes from herself—a smell of swamps and wilted violets—this less red and more suspicious blood than that flowing from children’s cuts and scratches. Day and night she has to think of changing her protection, watching her underwear, her sheets, and solving a thousand little practical and repugnant problems; in thrifty families sanitary napkins are washed each month and take their place among the piles of handkerchiefs; this waste coming out of oneself has to be delivered to those handling the laundry: the laundress, servant, mother, or older sister. The types of bandages pharmacies sell in boxes named after flowers, Camellia or Edelweiss, are thrown out after use; but while traveling, on vacation, or on a trip it is not so easy to get rid of them, the toilet bowl being specifically prohibited. The young heroine of the Psychoanalytical Journal described her horror of the sanitary napkin; she did not even consent to undress in front of her sister except in the dark during these times." [mijn nadruk] (743)

"The greater the young girl’s feeling of revulsion toward this feminine defect, the greater her obligation to pay careful attention to it so as not to expose herself to the awful humiliation of an accident or a little word of warning."(744)

[En ja hoor, we zijn weer terug bij af. En opnieuw komt ze met psychoanalytici aanzetten. Wat een ontzettend overdreven reactie op menstruatie. Alsof dat niet gewoon tot een onderdeel van je leven gemaakt kan worden, zoals iedereen met een andere beperking ook doet. Het is een kwestie van positieve acceptatie. En goede voorlichting door ouders en anderen helpt daarbij. Alsof het helpt dat alle vrouwen tegten elkaar roepen dat het "walgelijk" is. Het is niet walgelijk, het is de natuur, stel je niet aan. Je hebt als vrouw geen goede verhouding met je lichaam als je je menstruatie zo negatief beoordeelt. In de citaten van Liepmann zitten ook positieve reacties, die ziet ze blijkbaar niet, want meteen daarna heeft ze het over "this crisis".]

"Granted, boys too at puberty feel their body as an embarrassing presence, but because they have been proud of their virility from childhood, it is toward that virility that they proudly transcend the moment of their development; they proudly exhibit the hair growing between their legs, and that makes men of them; more than ever, their sex is an object of comparison and challenge." [mijn nadruk] (747)

[Ja, hoor, wij mannen zijn allemaal trots op onze mannelijkheid en vergelijkingen onze piemels de hele tijd met andere mannen in voortdurende competitie. Wat een beeld heeft De Beauvoir van mannen, zo vraag je je af. Maar het zal de psychoanalyse wel weer zijn.]

"Just as the penis gets its privileged value from the social context, the social context makes menstruation a malediction. One symbolizes virility and the other femininity: it is because femininity means alterity and inferiority that its revelation is met with shame."(748)

"In a sexually egalitarian society, she would envisage menstruation only as her unique way of acceding to an adult life; the human body has many other more repugnant servitudes in men and women: they easily make the best of them because as they are common to all they do not represent a flaw for anyone; menstrual periods inspire horror in adolescent girls because they thrust them into an inferior and damaged category."(749)

[Ineens zit De Beauvoir op een ander spoor. Precies, het gaat om de sociale context. Die maakt de betekenis die biologische fenomenen krijgen bij mensen. De Beauvoir doet er alleen weinig mee.]

"It is not only the arrival of her period that signals to the girl her destiny as a woman. Other dubious phenomena occur in her. Until then, her eroticism was clitoral. It is difficult to know if solitary sexual practices are less widespread in girls than in boys;" [mijn nadruk] (753)

[Inmiddels is er heel wat meer onderzoek gedaan naar dat soort zaken. Die clitoris is altijd belangrijk wat psychoanalytici ook roepen. En ja meisjes masturberen ook, in groten getale, wat minder dan jongens, maar toch. En ja, het kan verwarrend zijn als je ineens op een andere manier bekeken wordt, als je lichaam heel andere gevoelens krijgt bij aanraking, etc. Dat geldt ook voor jongens, maar gezien de sociale machtsverhoudingen - zeker in de tijd van De Beauvoir - hebben meiden meer last van opdringerige mannen dan andersom.]

" ... it often happens that some of the caresses of friends of the household, uncles, cousins, not to mention grandfathers and fathers, are much less inoffensive than the mother thinks; a professor, a priest, or a doctor was bold, indiscreet."(754)

[Zeker waar en tegenwoordig uitgebreid onderzocht.]

"Nevertheless, through reading, conversations, theater, and words she has overheard, the girl gives meaning to the disturbances of her flesh; she becomes appeal and desire. In her fevers, shivers, dampness, and uncertain states, her body takes on a new and unsettling dimension. The young man is proud of his sexual propensities because he assumes his virility joyfully; sexual desire is aggressive and prehensile for him; there is an affirmation of his subjectivity and transcendence in it; he boasts of it to his friends; his sex organ is for him a disturbance he takes pride in; the drive that sends him toward the female is of the same nature as that which throws him toward the world, and so he recognizes himself in it. On the contrary, the girl’s sexual life has always been hidden; when her eroticism is transformed and invades her whole flesh, the mystery becomes agonizing: she undergoes the disturbance as a shameful illness; it is not active: it is a state, and even in imagination she cannot get rid of it by any autonomous decision; she does not dream of taking, pressing, violating: she is wait and appeal; she feels dependent; she feels herself at risk in her alienated flesh." [mijn nadruk] (759)

[Ook hier wordt enorm gegeneraliseerd. Vandaag de dag zou je zo niet meer over meiden kunnen praten. De Beauvoir heeft het de hele tijd over vrouwen die totaal ongeïnformeerd zijn over hun lichaam, over seks, over mannen. Heel merkwaardig, ook in de veertiger / vijftiger jaren waarin ze dit boek schreef. De beeldvorming hier is bijzonder eenzijdig.]

"But the most obvious and detestable symbol of physical possession is penetration by the male’s sex organ. The girl hates the idea that this body she identifies with may be perforated as one perforates leather, that it can be torn as one tears a piece of fabric. But the girl refuses more than the wound and the accompanying pain; she refuses that these be inflicted."(760)

"We understand that the awkward age is a period of painful distress for the girl. She does not want to remain a child. But the adult world seems frightening or boring to her."(762)

[Ook weer zo eenzijdig negatief, allemaal. En haar onderbouwing is even eenzijdig, psychoanalytische auteurs en verhalen van vriendinnen. Het is de hele tijd net alsof we het over de hogere milieus rond 1900 hebben, zo ouderwets komt dit allemaal over.]

(778) Chapter 2 - The Girl

"Everyone unanimously agrees that catching a husband — or a protector in some cases — is for her the most important of undertakings. In her eyes, man embodies the Other, as she does for man; but for her this Other appears in the essential mode, and she grasps herself as the inessential opposite him. She will free herself from her parents’ home, from her mother’s hold; she will open up her future not by an active conquest but by passively and docilely delivering herself into the hands of a new master."(781)

[De vraag is: hoe komt dat? hoe ontstaat dat? De tweede vraag is: wat doe je er aan, hoe verander je dat? ]

"The male has recourse to his fists and fighting when he encounters any affront or attempt to reduce him to an object: he does not let himself be transcended by others; he finds himself again in the heart of his subjectivity. Violence is the authentic test of every 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’s self in an abstract subjectivity; an anger or a revolt that does not exert itself in muscles remains imaginary. It is a terrible frustration not to be able to imprint the movements of one’s heart on the face of the earth." (785)

[Wat een onzinnige theorie.]

"The young man’s erotic drives only go to confirm the pride that he obtains from his body: he discovers in it the sign of transcendence and its power. The girl can succeed in accepting her desires: but most often they retain a shameful nature. Her whole body is experienced as embarrassment."(787)

"To be feminine is to show oneself as weak, futile, passive, and docile. The girl is supposed not only to primp and dress herself up but also to repress her spontaneity and substitute for it the grace and charm she has been taught by her elder sisters. Any self-assertion will take away from her femininity and her seductiveness. A young man’s venture into existence is relatively easy, as his vocations of human being and male are not contradictory; his childhood already predicted this happy fate."(794)

[Herhaling herhaling ... Ze kan zich blijkbaar niet voorstellen dat veel mannen evenmin weinig zin hebben in de rol die van hen verwacht wordt, ook al is het de gepriviligieerde rol.]

"Proud to capture masculine interest and to arouse admiration, woman is revolted by being captured in return. With puberty she learned shame: and shame is mixed with her coquetry and vanity, men’s gazes flatter and hurt her at the same time; she would only like to be seen to the extent that she shows herself: eyes are always too penetrating. Hence the inconsistency disconcerting to men: she displays her décolletage and her legs, but she blushes and becomes vexed when someone looks at her. She enjoys provoking the male, but if she sees she has aroused his desire, she backs off in disgust: masculine desire is an offense as much as a tribute; insofar as she feels responsible for her charm, as she feels she is using it freely, she is enchanted with her victories: but while her features, her forms, her flesh, are given and endured, she wants to keep them from this foreign and indiscreet freedom that covets them."(827)

"This is the characteristic trait of the girl and gives the key to most of her behavior; she does not accept the destiny nature and society assign to her; and yet she does not actively repudiate it: she is too divided internally to enter into combat with the world; she confines herself to escaping reality or to contesting it symbolically. Each of her desires is matched by an anxiety: she is eager to take possession of her future, but she fears breaking with her past; she would like “to have” a man, she balks at being his prey. And behind each fear hides a desire: rape is abhorrent to her, but she aspires to passivity. Thus she is doomed to bad faith and all its ruses; she is predisposed to all sorts of negative obsessions that express the ambivalence of desire and anxiety."(831)

[Allemaal beweringen ... En de bronnen zijn nog steeds literatuur, films en psychoanalytici. Wat wil ze met al die 'constateringen'? Moeten we allemaal begrip op gaan brengen voor het dubbelzinnige en onduidelijke gedrag van vrouwen omdat ze 'niet anders kan'? Ze blijft de hele tijd hangen in 'hoe het is', alsof mannen en vrouwen nu eenmaal zo zijn. ]

(869) Chapter 3 - Sexual Initiation

"In a sense, woman’s sexual initiation, like man’s, begins in infancy. There is a theoretical and practical initiation period that follows continuously from the oral, anal, and genital phases up to adulthood. But the young girl’s erotic experiences are not a simple extension of her previous sexual activities; they are very often unexpected and brutal; they always constitute a new occurrence that creates a rupture with the past." [mijn nadruk] (869)

"Woman’s eroticism is far more complex and reflects the complexity of her situation. It has been seen that instead of integrating forces of the species into her individual life, the female is prey to the species, whose interests diverge from her own ends; this antinomy reaches its height in woman; one of its manifestations is the opposition of two organs: the clitoris and the vagina." [mijn nadruk] (871)

"The woman is penetrated and impregnated through the vagina; it becomes an erotic center uniquely through the intervention of the male, and this always constitutes a kind of rape. In the past, a woman was snatched from her childhood universe and thrown into her life as a wife by a real or simulated rape; this was an act of violence that changed the girl into a woman: it is also referred to as “ravishing” a girl’s virginity or “taking” her flower. This deflowering is not the harmonious outcome of a continuous development; it is an abrupt rupture with the past, the beginning of a new cycle. Pleasure is then reached by contractions of the inside surface of the vagina; do these contractions result in a precise and definitive orgasm? This point is still being debated."(871)

[Ook in dit hoofdstuk wordt weer bijzonder dramatisch gedaan over hoe de vrouwelijke seksualiteit zich ontwikkelt. Let op het taalgebruik. Als je ontmaagding en coïtus beschrijft als verkrachting, tja ... En weer zie ik de psychoanalyse op de achtergrond in plaats van degelijk wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Haar ideeën over de anatomische kant van seks voor vrouwen zijn volkomen verouderd. Bovendien lijkt het er bij haar bijna op dat seks gelijk staat aan coïtus en dat dat de enige manier is om seksueel plezier te hebben als je met iemand vrijt.]

"In the conditions just described, it is understandable that woman’s erotic beginnings are not easy. Quite frequently, incidents that occur in childhood and youth provoke deep resistance in her, as has been seen; sometimes it is insurmountable; most often, the young girl tries to overcome it, but violent conflicts build up in her. Her strict education, the fear of sinning, and feelings of guilt toward her mother all create powerful blocks. Virginity is valued so highly in many circles that to lose it outside marriage seems a veritable disaster."(886)

[Waarna ze dan weer ineens overschakelt naar de omstandigheden die die ellende veroorzaken zoals een stricte opvoeding, etc. Waarna ze weer eindeloos doorgaat over hoe vrouwen het slachtoffer zijn van die omstandigheden. Ja, dat is zo, dat weten we nu wel. ]

"Lover or husband, he is the one who leads her to the bed, where her only choice is to let go of herself and obey."(888)

[Dat is dat voortdurende slachtofferverhaal. Hebben vrouwen geen andere keuze dan? Kun je niet anders dan meegaan in wat de omstandigheden (je familie, bekenden, de samenleving) van je verwachten? Is er geen enkel verzet mogelijk?]

"Woman does not have the option of transforming her flesh into will: when she stops hiding it, she gives it up without defenses; even if she longs for caresses, she recoils from the idea of being seen and felt; all the more so as her breasts and buttocks are particularly fleshy; many adult women cannot bear to be seen from the rear even when they are dressed; imagine the resistance a naive girl in love has to overcome to consent to showing herself."(889)

"In any case, however deferential and courteous a man might be, the first penetration is always a rape. While she desires caresses on her lips and breasts and perhaps yearns for a familiar or anticipated orgasm, here is a male sex organ tearing the young girl and introducing itself into regions where it was not invited."(895)

[Ze blijft maar psychologiseren over hoe vrouwen zich in allerlei omstandigheden voelen. Ze hebben het erg moeilijk bij haar. En dan weer met hetzelfde boek van psychoanalyticus Stekel over frigide vrouwen aankomen. Of met andere psychoanalytici. Waarom heeft ze de werken van Kinsey niet gebruikt - die worden hier wel genoemd, maar niet als onderzoek op de achtergrond gebruikt]

(944) Chapter 4 - The Lesbian

"People are always ready to see the lesbian as wearing a felt hat, her hair short, and a necktie; her mannishness is seen as an abnormality indicating a hormonal imbalance. Nothing could be more erroneous than this confusion of the homosexual and the virago. There are many homosexual women among odalisques, courtesans, and the most deliberately “feminine” women; by contrast, a great number of “masculine” women are heterosexual. Sexologists and psychiatrists confirm what ordinary observation suggests: the immense majority of “cursed women” are constituted exactly like other women. Their sexuality is not determined by anatomical “destiny.”"(944)

[Wat ze hier allemaal verteld is volgens mij grotendeels achterhaald. Ze baseert zich opnieuw op psychoanalytische bronnen en literatuur. ]

(987) Part two | Situation

(987) Chapter 5 - The Married Woman

"The destiny that society traditionally offers women is marriage. Even today, most women are, were, or plan to be married, or they suffer from not being so. Marriage is the reference by which the single woman is defined, whether she is frustrated by, disgusted at, or even indifferent to this institution. Thus we must continue this study by analyzing marriage."(987)

[Dat is tegenwoordig waar en onwaar. Er zijn meer relatievormen waarvoor je vandaag de dag kunt kiezen. Zeker in Europa zie je naast het huwelijk - nog steeds de dominante leefvorm, dat is waar, en nu ook voor mensen met andere seksuele voorkeuren - al decennia geregistreerd en ongeregistreerd samenwonen, bewust ongehuwde moeders, LAT-relaties, bewust alleenlevende mannen en vrouwen, en zelfs polyamorie relaties. Wat dat betreft zijn de veertiger / vijftiger jaren van De Beauvoir echt voorbij. Schokkender is dat er nog steeds zo veel mensen geloven in exclusieve relaties die een heel leven duren. Daar zou ze het over moeten hebben.]

"Which of these tendencies prevails in tomorrow’s world depends on the general structure of society: but in any case masculine guardianship is becoming extinct. Yet, from a feminist point of view, the period we are living through is still a period of transition."

[Helaas maakt ze weer rare sprongen hier: ze constateert om te beginnen dat het huwelijk in haar tijd een stuk gelijkwaardiger is geworden, om te vervolgen met bladzijdenlange verhalen over ongelijkwaardige huwelijken uit het verleden waarin vrouwen afhankelijk waren van mannen. Ik vind het niet erg zinnig om de hele tijd - en ook nog eens op basis van bronnen van 1900 en ervoor of op basis van psychoanalytische bronnen - maar te benadrukken dat vrouwen het slachtoffer zijn / waren van mannen / van de door mannen gedomineerde samenleving. Dat punt is al lang duidelijk, graag verder naar nieuwe opvattingen en hoe die te realiseren. Voorbeelden:]

"In marrying, the woman receives a piece of the world as property; legal guaranties protect her from man’s caprices; but she becomes his vassal. He is economically the head of the community, and he thus embodies it in society’s eyes. She takes his name; she joins his religion, integrates into his class, his world; she belongs to his family, she becomes his other “half.” She follows him where his work calls him: where he works essentially determines where they live; she breaks with her past more or less brutally, she is annexed to her husband’s universe; she gives him her person: she owes him her virginity and strict fidelity. She loses part of the legal rights of the unmarried woman."(995)

"The “wedding night” transforms the erotic experience into an ordeal that neither partner is able to surmount, too involved with personal problems to think generously of each other; it is invested with a solemnity that makes it formidable; and it is not surprising that it often dooms the woman to frigidity forever."(1033)

"Many women, indeed, become mothers and grandmothers without ever having experienced pleasure or even arousal; they try to get out of their soilure of duty by getting medical certificates or using other pretexts. The Kinsey Report says that in America, many wives “report that they consider their coital frequencies already too high and wish that their husbands did not desire intercourse so often. A very few wives wish for more frequent coitus.” We have seen, though, that woman’s erotic possibilities are almost indefinite. This contradiction points up the fact that marriage, claiming to regulate feminine eroticism, kills it."(1035)

"Today, the gap is not as wide because the young girl is a less artificial being; she is better informed, better armed for life. But she is often much younger than her husband. The importance of this point has not been emphasized enough; the consequences of an unequal maturity are often taken as differences of sex; in many cases the wife is a child not because she is a woman but because she is in fact very young. The seriousness of her husband and his friends overwhelms her."(1099)

"Marriage incites man to a capricious imperialism: the temptation to dominate is the most universal and the most irresistible there is; to turn over a child to his mother or to turn over a wife to her husband is to cultivate tyranny in the world; it is often not enough for the husband to be supported and admired, to give counsel and guidance; he gives orders, he plays the sovereign; all the resentments accumulated in his childhood, throughout his life, accumulated daily among other men whose existence vexes and wounds him, he unloads at home by unleashing his authority over his wife; he acts out violence, power, intransigence; he issues orders in a severe tone, or he yells and hammers the table: this drama is a daily reality for the wife. He is so convinced of his rights that his wife’s least show of autonomy seems a rebellion to him; he would keep her from breathing without his consent. She, nonetheless, rebels. Even if she started out recognizing masculine prestige, her dazzlement is soon dissipated; one day the child recognizes his father is but a contingent individual; the wife soon discovers she is not before the grand Suzerain, the Chief, the Master, but a man; she sees no reason to be subjugated to him; in her eyes, he merely represents unjust and unrewarding duty. Sometimes she submits with a masochistic pleasure: she takes on the role of victim, and her resignation is only a long and silent reproach; but she often fights openly against her master as well, and begins tyrannizing him back."(1113)

"It is clear that in her struggle against her husband, she never intends to leave him."(1123)

"There are some escapes available to the wife;46 but in practice they are not available to all. The chains of marriage are heavy, particularly in the provinces; a wife has to find a way of coming to grips with a situation she cannot escape. Some, as we have seen, are puffed up with importance and become tyrannical matrons and shrews. Others take refuge in the role of the victim, they make themselves their husbands’ and children’s pathetic slaves and find a masochistic joy in it. Others perpetuate the narcissistic behavior we have described in relation to the young girl: they also suffer from not realizing themselves in any undertaking, and, being able to do nothing, they are nothing; undefined, they feel undetermined and consider themselves misunderstood; they worship melancholy; they take refuge in dreams, playacting, illnesses, fads, scenes; they create problems around them or close themselves up in an imaginary world ... "(1144)

"The traditional form of marriage is changing: but it still constitutes an oppression that both spouses feel in different ways. Considering the abstract rights they enjoy, they are almost equals; they choose each other more freely than before, they can separate much more easily, especially in America, where divorce is commonplace; there is less difference in age and culture between the spouses than previously; the husband more easily acknowledges the autonomy his wife claims; they might even share housework equally; they have the same leisure interests: camping, bicycling, swimming, and so on. She does not spend her days waiting for her spouse’s return: she practices sports, she belongs to associations and clubs, she has outside occupations, sometimes she even has a little job that brings her some money. Many young couples give the impression of perfect equality. But as long as the man has economic responsibility for the couple, it is just an illusion."(1157)

"There are young women who are already trying to win this positive freedom; but seldom do they persevere in their studies or their jobs for long: they know the interests of their work will most often be sacrificed to their husband’s career; their salary will only “help out” at home; they hesitate to commit themselves to undertakings that do not pull them away from conjugal enslavement."(1181)

(1169) Chapter 6 - The Mother

"It is through motherhood that woman fully achieves her physiological destiny; that is her “natural” vocation, since her whole organism is directed toward the perpetuation of the species. But we have already shown that human society is never left to nature. And in particular, for about a century, the reproductive function has no longer been controlled by biological chance alone but by design."(1169)

[Met andere woorden: moederschap is niet meer noodzakelijkerwijs de bestemming van vrouwen. De Beauvoir heeft het dan uitgebreid over abortus, maar dat verhaal is lang niet meer overal van toepassing - voornamelijk alleen nog daar waar religie een grote rol speelt.]

"Birth control and legal abortion would allow women to control their pregnancies freely."(1188)

[Dat lijkt mij ook. Voor de rest gaat het over ervaringen van vrouwen bij zwangerschap en bevalling en voeden en de verantwoordelijkheid van het moederschap, vaak weer gebaseerd op dezelfde oude en eenzijdige bronnen.]

"These examples all prove that there is no such thing as maternal “instinct”: the word does not in any case apply to the human species. The mother’s attitude is defined by her total situation and by the way she accepts it. It is, as we have seen, extremely variable.
But the fact is that if circumstances are not positively unfavorable, the mother will find herself enriched by a child."(1232)

"The situation differs, depending on whether the child is a boy or a girl; and while boys are more “difficult,” the mother generally gets along better with them. Because of the prestige woman attributes to men, and also the privileges they hold concretely, many women wish for a son."(1246)

"A dangerous misconception about two currently accepted preconceived ideas strongly emerges from the descriptions we have made. The first is that motherhood is enough in all cases to fulfill a woman: this is not at all true. Many are the mothers who are unhappy, bitter, and unsatisfied."(1256)

"The mother’s relation with her children is defined within the overall context of her life; it depends on her relations with her husband, her past, her occupations, herself; it is a fatal and absurd error to claim to see a child as a panacea."(1258)

"Such an obligation is not at all natural: nature could never dictate a moral choice; this implies an engagement. To have a child is to take on a commitment; if the mother shrinks from it, she commits an offense against human existence, against a freedom; but no one can impose it on her. The relation of parents to children, like that of spouses, must be freely chosen."(1260)

"The second preconceived idea immediately following the first is that the child is sure to find happiness in his mother’s arms. There is no such thing as an “unnatural mother,” since maternal love has nothing natural about it: but precisely because of that, there are bad mothers."(1261)

(1270) Chapter 7 - Social Life

"It is essentially the woman who will organize this social life."(1270)

[De vraag is of en in hoeverre dat vandaag de dag nog steeds zo is. En spelen die zaken die De Beauvoir zo uitvoerig beschrijft daarin nog steeds een rol, zoals de manier waarop je je als vrouw aan de wereld presenteert - kleding, opmaak, en zo verder?]

"As woman is an object, it is obvious that how she is adorned and dressed affects her intrinsic value. It is not pure frivolousness for her to attach so much importance to silk stockings, gloves, and a hat: keeping her rank is an imperious obligation."(1282)

"The feminine friendships she is able to keep or make are precious for a woman; they are very different from relations men have; men relate to each other as individuals through their ideas, their own personal projects; women, confined within the generality of their destiny as women, are united by a kind of immanent complicity. And what they seek first of all from each other is the affirmation of their common universe."(1298)

"The woman knows the male code is not hers, that man even expects she will not observe it since he pushes her to abortion, adultery, misdeeds, betrayal, and lies he officially condemns; she then asks other women to help her to define a sort of “parallel law,” a specifically feminine moral code. It is not only out of malevolence that women comment on and criticize the conduct of their girlfriends so much: to judge them and to lead their own lives, they need much more moral invention than men.
What makes these relationships valuable is their truthfulness. When confronting man, woman is always onstage; she lies when pretending to accept herself as the inessential other, she lies when she presents to him an imaginary personage through impersonations, clothes, and catchphrases; this act demands constant tension; every woman thinks more or less “I am not myself” around her husband or her lover; the male world is hard, there are sharp angles, voices are too loud, lights are too bright, contacts brusque. When with other women, the wife is backstage; she sharpens her weapons, she does not enter combat; she plans her clothes, devises makeup, prepares her ruses: she lies around in slippers and robe in the wings before going onstage; she likes this lukewarm, soft, relaxed atmosphere."(1300)

"For some women, this frivolous and warm intimacy is more precious than the serious pomp of their relations with men. It is in another woman that the narcissist, as in the days of her adolescence, sees a favorite double; it is through her attentive and competent eyes that she can admire her wellcut dress, her elegant interior. Over and above marriage, the best friend remains her favorite witness: she can still continue to be a desirable and desired object."(1303)

"In many circles today, women have partially gained sexual freedom. But it is still a difficult problem for them to reconcile their conjugal life with sexual satisfaction. As marriage generally does not mean physical love, it would seem reasonable to clearly differentiate one from the other. A man can admittedly make an excellent husband and still be inconstant: his sexual caprices do not in fact keep him from carrying out the enterprise of a friendly communal life with his wife; this amity will be all the purer, less ambivalent if it does not represent a shackle. One might allow that it could be the same for the wife; she often wishes to share in her husband’s existence, create a home with him for their children, and still experience other embraces."(1324)

"In any case, adultery, friendships, and social life are but diversions within married life; they can help its constraints to be endured, but they do not break them. They are only artificial escapes that in no way authentically allow the woman to take her destiny into her own hands."(1327)

(1328) Chapter 8 - Prostitutes and Hetaeras

"Marriage, as we have seen, has an immediate corollary in prostitution.(...) Man, out of prudence, destines his wife to chastity, but he does not derive satisfaction from the regime he imposes on her. (...) the existence of a caste of “lost women” makes it possible to treat “the virtuous woman” with the most chivalric respect. The prostitute is a scapegoat; man unloads his turpitude onto her, and he repudiates her."(1328-1329)

[Al te simpele oordelen in lijn met eerdere uitspraken. Het is allemaal de schuld van mannen. De hier geboden informatie is bovendien weer bijzonder antiek, zowel over de oorzaken van prostitutie, als over de prostituees zelf als over pooiers, en zo meer.]

"Most prostitutes are morally adapted to their condition; that does not mean they are hereditarily or congenitally immoral, but they rightly feel integrated into a society that demands their services. They know well that the edifying lecture of the policeman who puts them through an inspection is pure verbiage, and the lofty principles their clients pronounce outside the brothel do little to intimidate them."(1351)

[O, dus prostitutie is immoreel? Waarom?]

"The most recent incarnation of the hetaera is the movie star. Flanked by her husband or serious male friend — rigorously required by Hollywood — she is no less related to Phryne, Imperia, or Casque d’Or. She delivers Woman to the dreams of men who give her fortune and glory in exchange."(1354)

"The hetaera’s whole life is a show: her words, her gestures, are intended not to express her thoughts but to produce an effect. She plays a comedy of love for her protector: at times she plays it for herself. She plays comedies of respectability and prestige for the public: she ends up believing herself to be a paragon of virtue and a sacred idol. Stubborn bad faith governs her inner life and permits her studied lies to seem true."(1363)

(1370) Chapter 9 - From Maturity to Old Age

"Well before the definitive mutilation, woman is haunted by the horror of aging. The mature man is engaged in more important enterprises than those of love; his sexual ardor is less pressing than in his youth; and as he is not expected to have the passive qualities of an object, the alteration of his face and body does not spoil his possibilities of seduction. By contrast, woman reaches her full sexual blossoming at about thirty-five, having finally overcome all her inhibitions: this is when her desires are the most intense and when she wants to satisfy them the most ardently; she has counted on her sexual attributes far more than man has; to keep her husband, to be assured of protection, and to succeed in most jobs she holds, she has to please; she has not been allowed a hold on the world except through man’s mediation: What will become of her when she no longer has a hold on him? This is what she anxiously wonders while she witnesses, powerless, the degradation of this object of flesh with which she is one; she fights; but dyes, peeling, and plastic surgery can never do more than prolong her dying youth. At least she can play tricks with the mirror. But when the inevitable, irreversible process starts, which is going to destroy in her the whole edifice constructed during puberty, she feels touched by the very inevitability of death."(1372)

[Om maar weer eens duidelijk te maken hoe negatief De Beauvoir is over het bestaan van vrouwen. Ze schetst bepaalde verhoudingen tussen mannen en vrouwen steeds weer op dezelfde manier, met een koud en negatief taalgebruik, met beweringen die ze alleen maar onderbouwt met literatuur, psychoanalytische auteurs en de verhalen van vrouwen die ze zelf spreekt. Was de situatie wel zo? Is die situatie vandaag de dag nog zo? De Beauvoir geeft daar geen betrouwbare inzichten in.]

"A woman influenced by a tradition of decency and honesty does not always follow through with action. But her dreams are peopled with erotic fantasies that she calls up during waking hours as well; she manifests an exalted and sensual tenderness to her children; she cultivates incestuous obsessions with her son; she secretly falls in love with one young man after another; like an adolescent girl, she is haunted by ideas of rape; she also feels the attraction of prostitution; the ambivalence of her desires and fears produces an anxiety that sometimes leads to neuroses: she scandalizes her family and friends by bizarre behavior that in fact merely expresses her imaginary life."(1381)

"From the day woman agrees to grow old, her situation changes. Until then, she was still young, determined to fight against an evil that mysteriously made her ugly and deformed her; now she becomes a different being, asexual but complete: an elderly woman. It may be thought that the change-of-life crisis is then finished. But one must not conclude that it will be easy to live from then on. When she has given up the fight against the inevitability of time, another combat opens: she has to keep a place on earth."(1388)

[Vrouwen zijn volgens De Beauvoir dus a-seksueel na de menopauze. Wat een ontzettende onzin.]

(1414) Chapter 10 - Woman’s Situation and Character

"We can now understand why, from ancient Greece to today, there are so many common features in the indictments against woman; her condition has remained the same throughout superficial changes, and this condition defines what is called the woman’s “character”: she “wallows in immanence,” she is argumentative, she is cautious and petty, she does not have the sense either of truth or of accuracy, she lacks morality, she is vulgarly self-serving, selfish, she is a liar and an actress. There is some truth in all these affirmations. But the types of behaviors denounced are not dictated to woman by her hormones or predestined in her brain’s compartments: they are suggested in negative form by her situation. We will attempt to take a synthetic point of view of her situation, necessarily leading to some repetition, but making it possible to grasp the Eternal Feminine in her economic, social, and historical conditioning as a whole." [mijn nadruk] (1415)

[Nee, niet nog meer herhaling ... We weten het nu wel. Kern van de zaak:]

"The woman herself recognizes that the universe as a whole is masculine; it is men who have shaped it and ruled it and who still today dominate it; as for her, she does not consider herself responsible for it; it is understood that she is inferior and dependent; she has not learned the lessons of violence, she has never emerged as a subject in front of other members of the group; enclosed in her flesh, in her home, she grasps herself as passive opposite to these human-faced gods who set goals and standards. In this sense there is truth in the saying that condemns her to remaining “an eternal child”; it has also been said of workers, black slaves, and colonized natives that they were “big children” as long as they were not threatening; that meant they had to accept without argument the truths and laws that other men gave them. Woman’s lot is obedience and respect. She has no grasp, even in thought, on this reality that involves her."(1416)

"And in the man’s world, since she does not do anything, her thinking, as it does not flow into any project, is no different from a dream; she does not have the sense of truth, because she lacks efficacy; she struggles only by means of images and words: that is why she accepts the most contradictory assertions without a problem; she does not care about clarifying the mysteries of a sphere, which in any case is beyond her scope; she settles for horribly vague knowledge when it concerns her: she confuses parties, opinions, places, people, and events; there is a strange jumble in her head. But after all, seeing clearly is not her business: she was taught to accept masculine authority; she thus forgoes criticizing, examining, and judging for herself. She leaves it to the superior caste. This is why the masculine world seems to be a transcendent reality, an absolute to her. “Men make gods,” says Frazer, “and women worship them.”"(1420)

"In general, while more or less acknowledging men’s supremacy and accepting their authority, worshipping their idols, she will contest their reign tooth and nail; hence the famous “contrariness” for which she is so often criticized; as she does not possess an autonomous domain, she cannot put forward truths or positive values different from those that males assert; she can only negate them. Her negation is more or less systematic depending on her particular balance of respect and resentment. But the fact is, she knows all the fault lines of the masculine system and she hastens to denounce them."(1442)

"This is why women do not succeed in building a solid “counter-universe” where they can defy males; they sporadically rant against men in general, they tell stories about the bedroom or childbirth, they exchange horoscopes and beauty secrets. But to truly build this “world of grievances” that their resentment calls for, they lack conviction; their attitude to man is too ambivalent."(1454)

"... for woman there is no other way out than to work for her liberation. This liberation can only be collective, and it demands above all that the economic evolution of the feminine condition be accomplished."(1476)

(1478) Part three | Justifications

(1478) Chapter 11 - The Narcissist

"In fact, narcissism is a well-defined process of alienation: the self is posited as an absolute end, and the subject escapes itself in it. There are many other — authentic or inauthentic — attitudes found in woman: we have already studied some of them. What is true is that circumstances invite woman more than man to turn toward self and to dedicate her love to herself."(1478)

[En daar gaat ze weer vele bladzijden aan besteden. Waarom? Ik loop er snel doorheen.]

(1509) Chapter 12 - The Woman in Love

"Byron rightly said that love is merely an occupation in the life of the man, while it is life itself for the woman."(1509)

[En ook hier schrijven we 50 bladzijden over vol op de bekende manier en met de bekende bronnen. Ook alleen maar een snelle blik op geworpen.]

(1565) Chapter 13 - The Mystic

"Love has been assigned to woman as her supreme vocation, and when she addresses it to a man, she is seeking God in him: if circumstances deny her human love, if she is disappointed or demanding, she will choose to worship the divinity in God himself."(1566)

[En nog meer overbodige verhalen.]

(1583) Part four | Toward liberation

(1583) Chapter 14 - The Independent Woman

"French law no longer includes obedience among a wife’s duties, and every woman citizen has become a voter; these civic liberties remain abstract if there is no corresponding economic autonomy; the kept woman — wife or mistress — is not freed from the male just because she has a ballot paper in her hands; while today’s customs impose fewer constraints on her than in the past, such negative licenses have not fundamentally changed her situation; she remains a vassal, imprisoned in her condition. It is through work that woman has been able, to a large extent, to close the gap separating her from the male; work alone can guarantee her concrete freedom. The system based on her dependence collapses as soon as she ceases to be a parasite; there is no longer need for a masculine mediator between her and the universe." [mijn nadruk] (1584)

[Die economische onafhankelijkheid is inderdaad erg belangrijk. De situatie is wat dat betreft sterk verbeterd - er werken heel wat meer vrouwen dan in de tijd van de publicatie van dit boek -, toch werd ook onlangs in een blad geconstateerd dat het een belangrijk onderwerp blijft in relaties tussen mannen en vrouwen.]

"However, one must not think that the simple juxtaposition of the right to vote and a job amounts to total liberation; work today is not freedom. Only in a socialist world would the woman who has one be sure of the other. Today, the majority of workers are exploited. Moreover, social structures have not been deeply modified by the changes in women’s condition. This world has always belonged to men and still retains the form they have imprinted on it. It is important not to lose sight of these facts that make the question of women’s work complex." [mijn nadruk] (1585)

[Ook daar ben ik het mee eens. Werk binnen een kapitalistische samenleving heeft ook zijn typische eigenschappen. Bijvoorbeeld dat je als vrouw minder verdient dan een man voor hetzelfde werk. Of dat je als vrouw eerder ontslagen wordt dan een man. Daar komt nog bij dat de rolverdeling tussen mannen en vrouwen niet per se verandert als zij werkt, zoals al vaak is gebleken: het gevolg is dat zij naast haar werk ook nog het huishouden en de kinderen doet. Ik weet niet of er cijfers zijn over hoe dat vandaag de dag ligt.]

"However, there are quite a lot of privileged women today who have gained economic and social autonomy in their professions. They are the ones who are at issue when the question of women’s possibilities and their future is raised. While they are still only a minority, it is particularly interesting to study their situation closely they are the subject of continuing debate between feminists and antifeminists. The latter maintain that today’s emancipated women do not accomplish anything important, and that besides they have trouble finding their inner balance. The former exaggerate the emancipated women’s achievements and are blind to their frustrations. In fact, there is no reason to assume that they are on the wrong track; and yet it is obvious that they are not comfortably settled in their new condition: they have come only halfway as yet. Even the woman who has emancipated herself economically from man is still not in a moral, social, or psychological situation identical to his." [mijn nadruk] (1588)

[De kwestie is dat het nooit hetzelfde is als voor mannen. Wat bijvoorbeeld met allerlei waarden en normen over hoe vrouwen er uit moeten zien en zich moeten gedragen? Ook al heb je je economisch onafhankelijk weten te maken, hoe kun je je normatief onafhankelijk maken zonder jezelf op te zadelen met een vreselijk vervelend en onmogelijk bestaan?]

"Choosing defiance is a risky tactic unless it is a positively effective action; more time and energy are spent than saved. A woman who has no desire to shock, no intention to devalue herself socially, has to live her woman’s condition as a woman: very often her professional success even requires it. But while conformity is quite natural for a man — custom being based on his needs as an autonomous and active individual — the woman who is herself also subject and activity has to fit into a world that has doomed her to passivity. This servitude is even greater since women confined to the feminine sphere have magnified its importance: they have made dressing and housekeeping difficult arts."(1591)

"However, public opinion is not the only concern that makes her devote so much time and care to her looks and home. She wants to feel like a real woman for her own personal satisfaction. She only succeeds in accepting herself from the perspective of both the present and the past by combining the life she has made for herself with the destiny prepared for her by her mother, her childhood games, and her adolescent fantasies. She has cultivated narcissistic dreams; she continues to pit the cult of her image against the phallic pride of the male; she wants to show off, to charm."(1593)

"The fact is that men are beginning to come to terms with the new condition of women; no longer feeling condemned a priori, women feel more at ease; today the working woman does not neglect her femininity, nor does she lose her sexual attraction. This success — already a step toward equality — remains, nonetheless, incomplete; it is still much harder for a woman than for a man to have the type of relationship she would like with the other sex. Many obstacles stand in the way of her sex and love life."(1597)

"The solution of women picking up a partner for a night or an hour — assuming that the woman, endowed with a strong temperament and having overcome all her inhibitions, can consider it without disgust — is far more dangerous for her than for the male. The risk of venereal disease is more serious for her in that it is up to him to take precautions to avoid contamination; and, however prudent she may be, she is never completely covered against the threat of becoming pregnant. But the difference in physical strength is also very significant, especially in relations between strangers" [mijn nadruk] (1599)

"Thus the independent woman today is divided between her professional interests and the concerns of her sexual vocation; she has trouble finding her balance; if she does, it is at the price of concessions, sacrifices, and juggling that keep her in constant tension. More than in physiological facts, it is here that one must seek the reason for the nervousness and frailty often observed in her. It is difficult to decide how much woman’s physical makeup in itself represents a handicap. The obstacle created by menstruation, for example, has often been examined. Women known for their work or activities seem to attach little importance to it: Is this because they owe their success to the fact that their monthly problems are so mild?"(1618)

"To do great things, today’s woman needs above all forgetfulness of self: but to forget oneself one must first be solidly sure that one has already found oneself. Newly arrived in the world of men, barely supported by them, the woman is still much too busy looking for herself."(1630)

[Ik vind toch dat dit hoofdstuk niet zo veel handreikingen doet, weinig aanduidt hoe je je als vrouw dan kunt bevrijden. Ze begint aardig met het noemen van economische onafhankelijkheid, een analyse op dát punt zou wat te bieden kunnen hebben. Maar een paar bladzijden later vervalt ze al weer in allerlei verhalen en uitweidingen die duidelijk moeten maken dat vrouwen het in deze mannenwereld op allerlei manieren erg moeilijk hebben. Maar dat weten we nu wel. Wat we niet weten is hoe je die situatie kunt doorbreken.]

(1656) Conclusion

"The fact is that neither men nor women are satisfied with each other today. But the question is whether it is an original curse that condemns them to tear each other apart or whether the conflicts that pit them against each other express a transitory moment in human history."(1657)

"Indeed, even with the greatest bad faith in the world, it is impossible to detect a rivalry between the male and the female human that is specifically physiological. And so their hostility is located on that ground that is intermediate between biology and psychology, namely, psychoanalysis." [mijn nadruk] (1657)

[Wat een onzinnige bewering.]

"Meting out blame and approbation is useless. In fact, the vicious circle is so difficult to break here because each sex is victim both of the other and of itself; between two adversaries confronting each other in their pure freedom, an agreement could easily be found, especially as this war does not benefit anyone; but the complexity of this whole business comes from the fact that each camp is its enemy’s accomplice; the woman pursues a dream of resignation, the man a dream of alienation; inauthenticity does not pay: each one blames the other for the unhappiness brought on himself by taking the easy way out; what the man and the woman hate in each other is the striking failure of their own bad faith or their own cowardice."(1663)

"The fact is that men encounter more complicity in their woman companions than the oppressor usually finds in the oppressed; and in bad faith they use it as a pretext to declare that woman wanted the destiny they imposed on her."(1666)

"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 they would be taken from their parents but that they would not be abandoned to them. But is it enough to change laws, institutions, customs, public opinion, and the whole social context for men and women to really become peers?" [mijn nadruk] (1674)

[Je zou toch werkelijk willen dat ze precies dit eens verder was gaan analyseren. Die eindvraag, die twijfel daar roept mij bij het gevoel op dat ze niet erg gelooft in het belang van maatschappelijke veranderingen.]

"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; as of now, these consequences have been realized nowhere: in the U.S.S.R. no more than in France or the United States; and this is why today’s woman is torn between the past and the present; most often, she appears as a “real woman” disguised as a man, and she feels as awkward in her woman’s body as in her masculine garb. She has to shed her old skin and cut her own clothes. She will only be able to do this if there is a collective change."(1676)

[Ja, maar wat betekent dat concreet en hoe zet je een collectieve verandering in gang? Komt ze weer aan met psychoanalytische ideeën over de ontwikkeling van kinderen. Dat zal helpen ...]