I found this reading rather interesting, both for what I agreed with and for what I disagreed with, and in seeing the diversity of opinion of what others have posted I imagine tomorrow will be a lively and diverse discussion. I apologize for quoting the same paragraph as Steven, but it too stood out to me, particularly having read this blog before I did the reading and having had this paragraph in mind:
The reason for this is that women lack concrete means for organizing themselves into a unit which can stand face to face with the correlative unit. They have no past, no history, no religion of their own; and they have no such solidarity of work and interest as that of the proletariat. They are not even promiscuously herded together in the way that creates community feeling among the American Negroes, the ghetto Jews, the workers of Saint-Denis, or the factory hands of Renault. They live dispersed among the males, attached through residence, housework, economic condition, and social standing to certain men – fathers or husbands – more firmly than they are to other women. If they belong to the bourgeoisie, they feel solidarity with men of that class, not with proletarian women; if they are white, their allegiance is to white men, not to Negro women. The proletariat can propose to massacre the ruling class, and a sufficiently fanatical Jew or Negro might dream of getting sole possession of the atomic bomb and making humanity wholly Jewish or black; but woman cannot even dream of exterminating the males. The bond that unites her to her oppressors is not comparable to any other. The division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history. Male and female stand opposed within a primordial Mitsein, and woman has not broken it. The couple is a fundamental unity with its two halves riveted together, and the cleavage of society along the line of sex is impossible. Here is to be found the basic trait of woman: she is the Other in a totality of which the two components are necessary to one another.
I agree with a lot of what is in this paragraph but I also disagree with some. While this was written a while ago (1949 to be exact), Simone de Beauvoir does seem to have a very strong view that may not be entirely true. While "extermination" of the males is probably not something that is achievable due to greater average physical strength of men, the fact that in the vast majority of Earth's countries women are in the majority, and women have the right to vote in the vast majority of Earth's democracies, so if a kind of peaceful gender conflict were to arise (which I highly, highly doubt it will because the vast majority of men and women fundamentally care for each other and want to be together due to attraction) women could easily be victorious at the ballot box, provided they voted as a block. Granted, this would only happen if there was a massive contestation and the sexes were radically Balkanized, and as Simone de Beauvoir points out (and I agree) in this paragraph that women are split up in different parts of society based on race, ethnicity, religion, and affluence. What this suggests to me, however, is not that women are oppressed, but rather that issues of racial, ethnic, religious, and class status/income level are more important to women than issues of gender.
I would also agree with her view that women, at least traditionally, have sort of been an "other" in a relationship of two. Considering that men have had higher rates of employment and much higher rates of participation in leadership roles in the military or in religious, political, and many civic organizations and women have largely been confined to the home, that women are not as noticed, or as noticeable, nor as influential as their male counterparts. When we look at the vast majority of the great leaders of history, particularly the further back we go, be it military, political, or religious leadership have been men. As Simone de Beauvoir states, women have no (I would argue there is a little bit, but still) history. Every author and signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was a male (they were also all middle-aged or older, white, free, Christian or Deist, educated, and had more financial means, but that's for a different discussion). This shows truly how far women have come in society. The fact that it now seems strange and wrong to many and has generated a great deal of attention that the writers of the new Egyptian constitution are all male is a sign that this is a rather unusual and controversial event for today.
I would also disagree that women have no ability to organize. What about the Suffragettes? And more contemporarily, what about the League of Women Voters, the National Association of Women, and the National Association of Democratic Women and the National Association of Republican Women? As the backlash to the recent issues surrounding the "war on women" and the response suggest, women are organized, have an opinion, and will be heard. To go back to my earlier point about having a greater share of the electorate, women will decide the outcome of this November's elections, and given the war on women, they will "remember in November" and prevail on these issues of contestation. Polls are already showing a massive gender gap in terms of support for President Obama versus Governor Romney.
No comments:
Post a Comment