The entire existential thinking-philosophizing of de Beauvoir arises from, revolves around, critiques, and argues against the othering of women, that is, the problem of woman as Other.
This problematic oppression, this oppressive exclusion, permeates de Beauvoir’s writings, but it is extensively discussed and investigated in The Second Sex.
De Beauvoir on the Othering of Women in The Second Sex
As the title of the book says clearly and renders apparent, it is an investigation of the Other, otherness, and othering; the othering of women, of rendering them second, marginal, secondary, and inessential; a locale to which they have consistently been confined, from Plato to Levinas.
According to de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, men have always been prioritized over women, constantly assuming the position of the subject, announced as unity, centrality, completion, and absoluteness, and therefore marginalizing women as objects opposing and radically distant from the subject.
[The situation of any woman is that she is] a free and autonomous being like all human creatures, nevertheless finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other. They propose to stabilize her as object and to doom her to immanence since her transcendence is to be over-shadowed and forever transcended by another ego (conscience) which is essential and sovereign.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
Man, de Beauvoir says, is the norm whose superiority is normal, expected, and even required; woman, on the other hand, is the Other, excluded from the site reserved only for the norm by being obliged into occupying the usually negative place of non-normality.
Even if this place of non-normality, to which women are constantly confined, is not completely negative, it remains a place defined only through its apartness from the place reserved only for men.
In other words, even if that which is excluded from the norm and the normal is not seen as pure negativity, that is, even if women are seen either as pure mysteriousness or intangible and radical femininity, this way of characterizing, seeing, thinking, or differentiating still defines women by referring them back to an original model, which is the norm and the absolutely normal, that is, men.
In a word, for de Beauvoir, seeing women as negative non-normality, obscure mysteriousness, or intriguing femininity still remains caught up in the same logic that defines and understands women only by opposing them to men. In both cases, what is opposed to men disappears into the holding sway of men, into that to which it is opposed so that it could be defined and understood.
De Beauvoir takes the existential argument that “existence precedes essence” as a ground in which she grounds her arguments against the view that there is a fixed, pre-determined, and deciding essence constituting, shaping, and forming the being of a woman.
In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir critiques and argues against essentialism and how it permeates the oppressive thinking-deciding of social and economic institutions. De Beauvoir refuses and critiques all attempts at categorizing women as naturally emotional or delicate, since such attempts confine women to certain social and economic roles and render possible their othering.
For de Beauvoir, all metaphysical and biological arguments, assumptions, and theories whose aim is the establishing of a fixed feminine essence or a pre-determined feminine core must be rejected, for such theories and assumptions completely hollow out and close off women’s complex, rich, and diverse ways of being in the world by reducing them to the negative and mysterious category of foreignness and otherness.
As a sign indicating and rendering clear the confinement of women to foreignness as a category and locale, de Beauvoir says that only a woman would write a book talking about, discussing, and thinking from out of being a woman; a fact, for de Beauvoir, rendering clear and confirming the problem of woman as Other. The being and sexuality of heterosexual men, on the other hand, de Beauvoir says, are never questioned, for they are seen as the first, the norm, and thus the normal.
Women, because of their otherness and confinement to the margins in their distance from the center and its security, de Beauvoir says, must think and ask the question regarding the meaning of being a woman before even attempting to understand themselves, before even coming closer to themselves as themselves. Men, on the other hand, de Beauvoir says, do not carry out such a detouring, for they are already in themselves through themselves, unquestionably, since they are the complete first and the original center.
Women Are Partially Responsible for Their Own Otherness and Exclusion
Otherness, this movement of Othering, of rendering Other and foreign, is inevitable, according to de Beauvoir, for if one group sets itself apart as the first and the original, it must exclude from this presumed unity, simplicity, or purity those who are seen as neither pure nor complete; that is, the Other announced as outsiders and foreigners.
In other words, the dominant group constantly needs the oppressed so that it could confirm and render affirmed its holding sway. This Self/Other relation, de Beauvoir says, cannot be understood without passing through Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic, which grounds Sartre’s account of the look, in which it is argued that the relations linking people together are essentially and constantly hostile and conflictual.
But there are two main differences between de Beauvoir’s and Sartre’s accounts of the relations linking together oneself and the Other. Firstly, whereas Sartre’s account of the look mainly investigates the relation linking one singular consciousness together with another consciousness, de Beauvoir’s analysis focuses on the political and communal level.
Another difference is that de Beauvoir’s account thinks toward the breaking down and disappearance of otherness and othering when different Others start communicating with each other, whereas Sartre’s account of the look is grounded in the conviction that otherness, othering, hostility, and conflicts never disappear or break down, for they are what link oneself together with the Other in a never-ending process of becoming a subject by turning the Other into an object.
De Beauvoir’s assumption that otherness and othering fade away and disappear when different Others start communicating with each other leads to the following questions: Why has not the communicating between women and men led to the fading away of the othering processes that are directed toward women? Why does female otherness seem absolute and universal? Why are women still considered to be inessential, second, foreign, and marginal? Why have not they ever been considered essential and central?
Because women themselves render possible, facilitate, and take part in this oppression, othering, and violence. Women, de Beauvoir says, are partially responsible for being considered second, inessential, marginal, and foreign, for they negate their own freedom by refusing to assume reasonability for their own unique ways of existing in the world, oppressing themselves, marginalizing themselves, and therefore delivering themselves into bad faith.