Simone de Beauvoir: Existentialate THIS!

In her book The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir discusses (among other things) how the plight of the woman got to be where it is today; that is: as a second class citizen, a slave-class to males. In discussing this, she brings up the notion of the Self and the Other, and how that relates to the relationship between men and women. Women are categorized as the other, naturally because of their social standing when compared to the Self (the dominant class, in this case males). The Self perceives women as the other because the Self gets to make the rules, and set the social standards. Simply put, if you’re not part of the powerful Self you’re the Other. De Beauvoir’s questioning lies in how this Self/Other, Male/Female relationship came to be.

When looking at an oppressed people, it is often helpful to look at other groups of oppressed people (in de Beauvoir’s case she looked at Black People, Jews, the Proletariat and to a lesser extent, Native Americans). What de Beauvoir found was that in their struggle for recognition as valuable human beings there was a sense of community, and camaraderie; they were linked by a common culture, or language, or past. Women (in general) don’t have that past or sense of culture, or at least don’t have that to the same degree. Simone de Beauvoir suggests that this sense of camaraderie springs from the fact that all these oppressed groups had memory of a time in which they were free, and could always draw upon that, and have the hope for a return to those days fuel their struggles. Women, she says, do not have those memories because they were always oppressed, and marginalized. Simone de Beauvoir says: “They [women] 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.” De Beauvoir suggests that when a Black person, or a Jewish person wants to feel solidarity to something they can feel solidarity to another Black person, or Jewish person; while a white woman will feel solidarity to a while man, and a bourgeois female will feel solidarity to a bourgeois male. It is this lack of history, and culture; and lack of recognition between their fellow women that has held the goals of a woman’s equal recognition back.

My question is this: Is de Beauvoir right in saying that a lack of a definable past in woman’s history is keeping them back from their goals at recognition from the Self? Her comparisons to the various groups she mentioned (Blacks, Jews, Native Americans, Proletariat) can be used in support against her claims as well. Sure these groups have received recognition from the Self but this is on paper only. While men may recognize himself in a Black male, or Jewish male, they are still held in lower regard by the Self. This is similar to the case of women, where on paper they are already regarded as equal and valuable citizens (I should mention that by ‘on paper’ I mean in the written word of law. For example, there’s nothing that says a Black person, or Jew, or a woman can’t be the leader of a country, or work the same job as a white-male.), yet in practice this ‘equal-regard’ is another story. Also, I feel that lumping in Black, Jewish, Proletariat, and Native American males in with middle-to-upper-class white-males and labeling them the same group is fallacious. Social practices are more complex, and don’t have the capacities just yet to fully welcome all men as equal.