de Beauvoir : Otherness

• Hegel's Master / Slave dialectic

  • Hegel describes two individuals, the master and the slave (representation of a fundamental social dynamic)
  • The master is unstable because he depends upon the slaves recognition of master superiority in order to stay in control / power
  • Once the slave becomes aware of his own worth / power, he can take back control and develop selfhood
  • The slave, who has freed himself, has a higher self-consciousness than the master ever did, because he was always dependent on the subversion of the slave
  • Genuine freedom arises when individuals recognise each other as equals, engage in mutual recognition and cooperation
  • Metaphor for the evolution of human consciousness and the dynamics of power and recognition in social relationships
• Women are perceived as lower class members of society
• Man refers to all of humanity, whereas woman only refers to the one gender
• Otherness is a fundamental thought in human nature - everything must have an opposing force
• Men can't think of themselves without the women
• Women are all encompassed in their position as the other
• They do not realise that they are oppressed
• Togetherness with men
• All encompassed : too busy taking on their role as the woman to realise that they are actually being oppressed
• Women define themselves in the category as a woman, which limits their individual freedom
• Socialisation of women into these roles
• Women in the modern world are expected to do it all (home carer but also employed)
• Need to dismantle patriarchal systems and eliminate gender based discrimination / control
• Women must be free to pursue their own goals and aspirations
• Women should be able to participate fully in everyday life - contribute to the creation of society
• Reliant on political will, societal attitudes and institutional change
• Patriarchal attitudes and structures persist in societies - perpetuates gender discrimination and violence towards women
• Women should have recognition for their caregiving that they undertake in the home
• “He is the subject, he is the absolute - she is the other”
• “otherness is a fundamental category of human thought”
• they are a specific kind of other to men - dependent on men financially after having babies etc
• "You think so because you are a woman... I think so because it is true"
• "I am woman"
• "the woman's body seems devoid of meaning without man"
• women are locked within their subjectivity
• Paragraph 1 : WOMEN AS THE OTHER
• Paragraph 2 : WHY DO THEY NOT REALISE?
• Paragraph 3 : WHAT DO WE DO?