De Beauvoir Disc. Starter: What is negative about woman being ‘the Other’?

What is negative about woman being ‘the Other’?

One of the essential suppositions of de Beauvoir’s theory surrounding women is that those defined as women exist in a world in which man is the default and woman is the Other, a sort of male appendage that cannot exist separately from the Self that it delineates.  In being the Other, woman always finds herself caught between diametrically opposed fates, behaviors, and aspects of society, a struggle that takes a great toll on those who are forced to bear its weight.  In being the Other, woman is forcibly allocated to the realm of immanence, while only men are permitted to interact with the world through the ontological framework of transcendence—these antipodean modes of being can be seen, de Beauvoir argues, in early human societies, where men began to create tools and use them for the purpose of transcendence, while women were relegated to immanent lifestyles in the form of reproduction and the maintenance of the family.  While men enjoyed transcendence through the invention of the tool, women remained bound to their bodies in an animalistic manner through the pains and difficulty of maternity.

The Othering of women, de Beauvoir goes on to explicate, presents women with the additional burden of being simultaneously Other and Self.  Many women feel they can find freedom in embracing their status as Other—that is, they derive pleasure from being sexualized, subordinate creatures in relation to their autonomous, transcendent male counterparts—as it exempts them from the hardships inherent in the struggle for liberation and allows them to enjoy an easy, if myopic, life often characterized by opulence.  Of course, the main price of such a life is domination and lack of agency, as the very definition of the Other presupposes the domination of the Other by the Self, as seen in instances of colonialism, enslavement, and other modes of abuse.  Women who attempt to reject Othering, however, are faced with a whole other set of difficulties to contend with; for one, in attempting to spurn men, they are confronted with the reality that—unlike other opposing groups like the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, for example—their lives, communities, and fates are intimately intertwined with those of the men around them.  Women have fathers and grandfathers; they may have brothers, male mentors, or be in relationships with men, and all of these social mores and intimacies inherently make them what de Beauvoir terms the “accomplices” of men.  “Each camp,” de Beauvoir writes, “is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”  Historical materialism, the doctrine espoused by Marx and Engels, suggests that women and men are mere economic units and that the rise of socialism will bring about gender equality by essentially expunging all differences between genders; de Beauvoir rejects this view of the future, as women cannot be reduced to mere productive forces—they are sexual partners, bearers of children, embodiments of eroticism, and Others through which men seek themselves.  In addition, as women seek transcendence, they often embrace masculine values and declare themselves the equal of men, but in doing so find themselves trapped between the realms of Other and self.  Men see such liberated women as traps, as they are at once free and independent—traditional characteristics of the Enlightenment male—and seductive beings who use their very status as Other to prey upon men.  

Othering, de Beauvoir adds, is harmful for men as well as women—men use the Othering of women to create a double with which they simultaneously identify and oppress.  Men feel hostility for their Others, their monstrous doubles, because they are afraid of the very images with which they identify.  From this fear stem myths about female anatomy, images of female insects devouring their mates, and platitudes like the figure of the murderously seductive woman.  As de Beauvoir summarizes, “what time and strength he squanders in liquidating, sublimating, transferring complexes, in talking about women, in seducing them, in fearing them!”  In liberating women from the status of Other, men would also be liberating themselves, but such liberation is incomprehensible in a world where men as existents have relied on doubles and Others since birth and the “anxiety of liberty” pervades all aspects of being.