Random Thread! The "myth of woman"

[kizik]

Hey guys,

 

first off, thanks so much for being my friend.

 

Secondly, here's a short response I wrote for a college class. Thought we could use a change of pace, a little something "intellectual..." Anyway, it's about the myth of woman and other sh*t.

 

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Wittig discusses the idea of “woman” as merely “an imaginary formation, while ‘women’ is the product of a social relationship” (2018). Meanwhile, Beauvoir views woman as a real, yet misunderstood, entity. He makes little, if any, distinction between “woman” and “women”. Primarily he is critical of the “myth” men have imposed upon women. He gives several reasons for this imposition, including male ignorance and the function of “mystery” to explain away a woman’s “capricious” and “stupid” remarks (1409). He discusses men’s projection of mystery upon women because men cannot understand, for example, the pain of childbirth and the discomfort of menstruation. Conversely, woman “in turn is in ignorance of the male’s erotic feeling” (1409). These biological differences being the most obvious representations of the inherent divide between the sexes, they are often unfairly used to sum up, or explain, the sexes.

 

I feel like the former “mystery of woman” has given way to the write-off of woman. How many times have you heard someone crudely say, “She must be on her period”? This specifically is interesting because it illustrates what Beauvoir says about men being “condemned to ignorance” of the female biological condition. However, this is not mere ignorance; it is cruelty, an attempt to use the sexes’ biological differences to undermine “the second sex.” Biological differences aside, women are no longer seen as “mysterious,” they are seen as crazy.

 

“Women are insane”—this is a refrain I hear at least weekly, from men and women, and it’s supposed to simultaneously explain and dispel the difficulty men and women have getting along in relationships. Beauvoir would respond that “the human being is not anything. He is to be measured by his acts” (1410). A woman may act in ways that confuse a man (who is confused because he only understands how men act), but if the man writes the woman off as crazy or on her period, he is guilty of an unjust, cruel oversimplification. Likewise, if a man’s “erotic feeling” is overemphasized (“He’s just a walking cock”), he too is being viewed as nothing more than a body, and not a soul. Wittig would say that by “naturalizing history” in such biological terms, we “naturalize the social phenomena which express our oppression, making change impossible” (2015).

[Storyrider]

Did you know Simone De Beauvoir is female?

[kizik]

Thanks! Gotta change that...

[Storyrider]

Thanks! Gotta change that...

 

No problem.

 

She is very interesting. Although she was one of the ground-breaking feminists, she put up with quite a lot from her long-time lover, existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

 

When Jean-Paul Sartre died in 1980, Simone de Beauvoir - who had shared with him a notorious, lifelong "open" relationship of great intensity and at times, on her part, great pain - wanted to make a gesture of farewell to the love of her life. She tried to get into the death bed to lie with him in her arms one last time. She had to be restrained from doing so by Sartre's doctors. It was too dangerous. The corpse had gangrene.

 

 

Quoted from:

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/howard-brentons-passion-for-abeacutelard-and-heloise-413812.html

[northstar1]

No problem.

 

She is very interesting. Although she was one of the ground-breaking feminists, she put up with quite a lot from her long-time lover, existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

 

 

 

 

Quoted from:

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/howard-brentons-passion-for-abeacutelard-and-heloise-413812.html

 

 

Now, that is romantic

[Exl]

hey clone

[LikeCharlotte]

However, this is not mere ignorance; it is cruelty, an attempt to use the sexes’ biological differences to undermine “the second sex.” Biological differences aside, women are no longer seen as “mysterious,” they are seen as crazy.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

It feels so good tho know the world isn't filled with ignorance.

[sedgwick]

The Second Sex is a great book...by Simone de Beauvoir (not just "Beauvoir"), who happens to be a woman herself.

 

Other than that, I hear ya barkin'.