A critique that is often directed toward existentialism is that it ignores the problem of sexual difference either by leaving it unthought and unquestioned or by engaging in a discourse that is sexist, biased, and even oppressive.
What the existentialism of de Beauvoir and the commentaries and the literature that it still generates show and confirm is that her version of existentialism questions, problematizes, and investigates something that is entirely absent from the works of those who are also considered to be existentialists, such as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, which is the problem of sexual difference.
The Sexism of Sartre’s Existentialism
Toward the end of Being and Nothingness, problematic, strange, and biased sexual metaphors and examples begin to appear in Sartre’s text, in which Sartre’s entire version of existentialism is proposed and argued for.
An example of this sexism, in its bias and oppression, is Sartre’s sexist discussion of holes, what they represent, and how they are perceived.
Another example is Sartre’s discussion of concrete situations, where human beings come together and come face to face with each other, in which women are only allowed to appear when there is a sexual encounter, relation, or situation.
In other words, women never appear in the existentialism of Sartre as historical, belonging to an economic situation, or thinking from out of their own facticity toward the world. That is to say, they are mentioned to the extent that are sexual and sexualized. This is why it has often been argued that in the existentialism of Sartre women are nothing but a sexed body
Another argument is that these sexed bodies, in Sartre’s thinking, even lack any specificity, since, for Sartre, there is nothing but “flesh” in the sense that Sartre places “my flesh” over against “the flesh of the other” without thinking or questioning the possibility that there might be differences between sexes.
Merleau-Ponty’s Failure to Think Sexual Difference
Regarding the existential thinking-philosophizing of Merleau-Ponty, the accusation remains that his work is to some extent sexist but not as sexist and biased as Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.
Besides, his inquiry into embodiment and his analysis of sexuality are considered by some scholars to be failures insofar as they do not take into consideration that there are differences between how men and women experience embodiment and sexuality.
More specifically, a critique that is often directed toward Merleau-Ponty’s analysis is that it assumes that men’s and women’s bodies are the same and accordingly that no specific contextualized and clearly determined frameworks and backdrops are required.
That is to say, Merleau-Ponty assumes that bodies are abstract and neutral, devoid of contextualization and specificity, which is a view that is rejected by many feminist theorists not only because there are male bodies and female bodies, but also because there are, for example, young bodies and old bodies and sick bodies and well bodies. In other words, bodies are never one and the same. Bodies are complex, existentially, ontologically, and phenomenologically.
The Existentialism of de Beauvoir As a Response
De Beauvoir’s version of existentialism sheds light on, and responds to, the lack residing in the existential works of her contemporaries, for her work primarily emerges from the acknowledgment that there are differences between women and men.
The importance of The Second Sex lies in that it existentially thinks and philosophizes from out the factical existence of women in a world that is patriarchal and therefore oppressive and biased.
The most fundamental argument in The Second Sex is that what women experience in the world is entirely different from what men experience. This is why thinking and investigating the unique experiences of women require specificity, contextualization, and different concepts and ways of thinking, according to de Beauvoir.
In other words, sexual differences are ontologically and existentially indicative and must thus be thought and investigated in any inquiry about how human beings are in the world.
For more articles on the existentialism of de Beauvoir, visit this webpage.