The Second Sex

everything that particularizes

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.”

They live dispersed among men, tied by homes, work, economic interests, and social conditions to certain men—fathers or husbands—more closely than to other women.

Certainly woman like man is a human being; but such an assertion is abstract; the fact is that every concrete human being is always uniquely situated.

the woman’s body seems devoid

Man thinks himself without woman. Woman does not think herself without man.”

of meaning without reference to the male.

He grasps his body as a direct and normal link with the world that he believes he apprehends in all objectivity, whereas he considers woman’s body an obstacle, a prison, burdened by

But nominalism is a doctrine that falls a bit short; and it is easy for antifeminists to show that women are not men.