The Second Sex

Religions forged by men reflect this will for domination: they found ammunition in the legends of Eve and Pandora.

Refusing to be the Other, refusing complicity with man, would mean renouncing all the advantages an alliance with the superior caste confers on them.

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.

This convergence is in no way pure chance: whether it is race, caste, class, or sex reduced to an inferior condition, the justification process is the same. “The eternal feminine” corresponds to “the black soul” or “the Jewish character.”

passive, alienated, and lost, is prey to a foreign will, cut off from his transcendence, robbed of all worth.

was willed in heaven and profitable on earth.

“The passage from the state of Nature to the state of Culture is defined by man’s ability to think biological relations as systems of oppositions; duality, alternation, opposition, and symmetry, whether occurring in defined or less clear form, are not so much phenomena to explain as fundamental and immediate givens of social reality.”

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

Refusing to be the Other, refusing complicity with man, would mean renouncing all the advantages an alliance with the superior caste confers on them. Lord-man