Monday, February 13, 2012

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)


Introduction
Woman as Other

FOR a long time I have hesitated to write a book on woman. The subject is irritating, especially to women; and it is not new. Enough ink has been spilled in quarrelling over feminism, and perhaps we should say no more about it. It is still talked about, however, for the voluminous nonsense uttered during the last century seems to have done little to illuminate the problem. After all, is there a problem? And if so, what is it? Are there women, really? Most assuredly the theory of the eternal feminine still has its adherents who will whisper in your ear: ‘Even in Russia women still are women’; and other erudite persons – sometimes the very same – say with a sigh: ‘Woman is losing her way, woman is lost.’ One wonders if women still exist, if they will always exist, whether or not it is desirable that they should, what place they occupy in this world, what their place should be. ‘What has become of women?’ was asked recently in an ephemeral magazine.
But first we must ask: what is a woman? ‘Tota mulier in utero’, says one, ‘woman is a womb’. But in speaking of certain women, connoisseurs declare that they are not women, although they are equipped with a uterus like the rest. All agree in recognising the fact that females exist in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. Is this attribute something secreted by the ovaries? Or is it a Platonic essence, a product of the philosophic imagination? Is a rustling petticoat enough to bring it down to earth? Although some women try zealously to incarnate this essence, it is hardly patentable. It is frequently described in vague and dazzling terms that seem to have been borrowed from the vocabulary of the seers, and indeed in the times of St Thomas it was considered an essence as certainly defined as the somniferous virtue of the poppy
But conceptualism has lost ground. The biological and social sciences no longer admit the existence of unchangeably fixed entities that determine given characteristics, such as those ascribed to woman, the Jew, or the Negro. Science regards any characteristic as a reaction dependent in part upon a situation. If today femininity no longer exists, then it never existed. But does the word woman, then, have no specific content? This is stoutly affirmed by those who hold to the philosophy of the enlightenment, of rationalism, of nominalism; women, to them, are merely the human beings arbitrarily designated by the word woman. Many American women particularly are prepared to think that there is no longer any place for woman as such; if a backward individual still takes herself for a woman, her friends advise her to be psychoanalysed and thus get rid of this obsession. In regard to a work, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, which in other respects has its irritating features, Dorothy Parker has written: ‘I cannot be just to books which treat of woman as woman ... My idea is that all of us, men as well as women, should be regarded as human beings.’ But nominalism is a rather inadequate doctrine, and the antifeminists have had no trouble in showing that women simply are not men. Surely woman is, like man, a human being; but such a declaration is abstract. The fact is that every concrete human being is always a singular, separate individual. To decline to accept such notions as the eternal feminine, the black soul, the Jewish character, is not to deny that Jews, Negroes, women exist today – this denial does not represent a liberation for those concerned, but rather a flight from reality. Some years ago a well-known woman writer refused to permit her portrait to appear in a series of photographs especially devoted to women writers; she wished to be counted among the men. But in order to gain this privilege she made use of her husband’s influence! Women who assert that they are men lay claim none the less to masculine consideration and respect. I recall also a young Trotskyite standing on a platform at a boisterous meeting and getting ready to use her fists, in spite of her evident fragility. She was denying her feminine weakness; but it was for love of a militant male whose equal she wished to be. The attitude of defiance of many American women proves that they are haunted by a sense of their femininity. In truth, to go for a walk with one’s eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits, interests, and occupations are manifestly different. Perhaps these differences are superficial, perhaps they are destined to disappear. What is certain is that they do most obviously exist.
If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through ‘the eternal feminine’, and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question “what is a woman”?
To state the question is, to me, to suggest, at once, a preliminary answer. The fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never set out to write a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion. A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man. The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use ofman to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity. In the midst of an abstract discussion it is vexing to hear a man say: ‘You think thus and so because you are a woman’; but I know that my only defence is to reply: ‘I think thus and so because it is true,’ thereby removing my subjective self from the argument. It would be out of the question to reply: ‘And you think the contrary because you are a man’, for it is understood that the fact of being a man is no peculiarity. A man is in the right in being a man; it is the woman who is in the wrong. It amounts to this: just as for the ancients there was an absolute vertical with reference to which the oblique was defined, so there is an absolute human type, the masculine. Woman has ovaries, a uterus: these peculiarities imprison her in her subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature. It is often said that she thinks with her glands. Man superbly ignores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, such as the testicles, and that they secrete hormones. He thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection with the world, which he believes he apprehends objectively, whereas he regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it. ‘The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,’ said Aristotle; ‘we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.’ And St Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be an ‘imperfect man’, an ‘incidental’ being. This is symbolised in Genesis where Eve is depicted as made from what Bossuet called ‘a supernumerary bone’ of Adam.
Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being. Michelet writes: ‘Woman, the relative being ...’ And Benda is most positive in his Rapport d’Uriel: ‘The body of man makes sense in itself quite apart from that of woman, whereas the latter seems wanting in significance by itself ... Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.’ And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called ‘the sex’, by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex – absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other.’
The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. In the most primitive societies, in the most ancient mythologies, one finds the expression of a duality – that of the Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes; it was not dependent upon any empirical facts. It is revealed in such works as that of Granet on Chinese thought and those of Dumézil on the East Indies and Rome. The feminine element was at first no more involved in such pairs as Varuna-Mitra, Uranus-Zeus, Sun-Moon, and Day-Night than it was in the contrasts between Good and Evil, lucky and unlucky auspices, right and left, God and Lucifer. Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought.
Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself. If three travellers chance to occupy the same compartment, that is enough to make vaguely hostile ‘others’ out of all the rest of the passengers on the train. In small-town eyes all persons not belonging to the village are ‘strangers’ and suspect; to the native of a country all who inhabit other countries are ‘foreigners’; Jews are ‘different’ for the anti-Semite, Negroes are ‘inferior’ for American racists, aborigines are ‘natives’ for colonists, proletarians are the ‘lower class’ for the privileged.
Lévi-Strauss, at the end of a profound work on the various forms of primitive societies, reaches the following conclusion: ‘Passage from the state of Nature to the state of Culture is marked by man’s ability to view biological relations as a series of contrasts; duality, alternation, opposition, and symmetry, whether under definite or vague forms, constitute not so much phenomena to be explained as fundamental and immediately given data of social reality.’ These phenomena would be incomprehensible if in fact human society were simply a Mitsein or fellowship based on solidarity and friendliness. Things become clear, on the contrary, if, following Hegel, we find in consciousness itself a fundamental hostility towards every other consciousness; the subject can be posed only in being opposed – he sets himself up as the essential, as opposed to the other, the inessential, the object.
But the other consciousness, the other ego, sets up a reciprocal claim. The native travelling abroad is shocked to find himself in turn regarded as a ‘stranger’ by the natives of neighbouring countries. As a matter of fact, wars, festivals, trading, treaties, and contests among tribes, nations, and classes tend to deprive the concept Other of its absolute sense and to make manifest its relativity; willy-nilly, individuals and groups are forced to realize the reciprocity of their relations. How is it, then, that this reciprocity has not been recognised between the sexes, that one of the contrasting terms is set up as the sole essential, denying any relativity in regard to its correlative and defining the latter as pure otherness? Why is it that women do not dispute male sovereignty? No subject will readily volunteer to become the object, the inessential; it is not the Other who, in defining himself as the Other, establishes the One. The Other is posed as such by the One in defining himself as the One. But if the Other is not to regain the status of being the One, he must be submissive enough to accept this alien point of view. Whence comes this submission in the case of woman?
There are, to be sure, other cases in which a certain category has been able to dominate another completely for a time. Very often this privilege depends upon inequality of numbers – the majority imposes its rule upon the minority or persecutes it. But women are not a minority, like the American Negroes or the Jews; there are as many women as men on earth. Again, the two groups concerned have often been originally independent; they may have been formerly unaware of each other’s existence, or perhaps they recognised each other’s autonomy. But a historical event has resulted in the subjugation of the weaker by the stronger. The scattering of the Jews, the introduction of slavery into America, the conquests of imperialism are examples in point. In these cases the oppressed retained at least the memory of former days; they possessed in common a past, a tradition, sometimes a religion or a culture.
The parallel drawn by Bebel between women and the proletariat is valid in that neither ever formed a minority or a separate collective unit of mankind. And instead of a single historical event it is in both cases a historical development that explains their status as a class and accounts for the membership of particular individuals in that class. But proletarians have not always existed, whereas there have always been women. They are women in virtue of their anatomy and physiology. Throughout history they have always been subordinated to men, and hence their dependency is not the result of a historical event or a social change – it was not something that occurred. The reason why otherness in this case seems to be an absolute is in part that it lacks the contingent or incidental nature of historical facts. A condition brought about at a certain time can be abolished at some other time, as the Negroes of Haiti and others have proved: but it might seem that natural condition is beyond the possibility of change. In truth, however, the nature of things is no more immutably given, once for all, than is historical reality. If woman seems to be the inessential which never becomes the essential, it is because she herself fails to bring about this change. Proletarians say ‘We’; Negroes also. Regarding themselves as subjects, they transform the bourgeois, the whites, into ‘others’. But women do not say ‘We’, except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say ‘women’, and women use the same word in referring to themselves. They do not authentically assume a subjective attitude. The proletarians have accomplished the revolution in Russia, the Negroes in Haiti, the Indo-Chinese are battling for it in Indo-China; but the women’s effort has never been anything more than a symbolic agitation. They have gained only what men have been willing to grant; they have taken nothing, they have only received.
The reason for this is that women lack concrete means for organising themselves into a unit which can stand face to face with the correlative unit. They 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. They are not even promiscuously herded together in the way that creates community feeling among the American Negroes, the ghetto Jews, the workers of Saint-Denis, or the factory hands of Renault. They live dispersed among the males, attached through residence, housework, economic condition, and social standing to certain men – fathers or husbands – more firmly than they are to other women. If they belong to the bourgeoisie, they feel solidarity with men of that class, not with proletarian women; if they are white, their allegiance is to white men, not to Negro women. The proletariat can propose to massacre the ruling class, and a sufficiently fanatical Jew or Negro might dream of getting sole possession of the atomic bomb and making humanity wholly Jewish or black; but woman cannot even dream of exterminating the males. The bond that unites her to her oppressors is not comparable to any other. The division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history. Male and female stand opposed within a primordial Mitsein, and woman has not broken it. The couple is a fundamental unity with its two halves riveted together, and the cleavage of society along the line of sex is impossible. Here is to be found the basic trait of woman: she is the Other in a totality of which the two components are necessary to one another.
One could suppose that this reciprocity might have facilitated the liberation of woman. When Hercules sat at the feet of Omphale and helped with her spinning, his desire for her held him captive; but why did she fail to gain a lasting power? To revenge herself on Jason, Medea killed their children; and this grim legend would seem to suggest that she might have obtained a formidable influence over him through his love for his offspring. In Lysistrata Aristophanes gaily depicts a band of women who joined forces to gain social ends through the sexual needs of their men; but this is only a play. In the legend of the Sabine women, the latter soon abandoned their plan of remaining sterile to punish their ravishers. In truth woman has not been socially emancipated through man’s need – sexual desire and the desire for offspring – which makes the male dependent for satisfaction upon the female.
Master and slave, also, are united by a reciprocal need, in this case economic, which does not liberate the slave. In the relation of master to slave the master does not make a point of the need that he has for the other; he has in his grasp the power of satisfying this need through his own action; whereas the slave, in his dependent condition, his hope and fear, is quite conscious of the need he has for his master. Even if the need is at bottom equally urgent for both, it always works in favour of the oppressor and against the oppressed. That is why the liberation of the working class, for example, has been slow.
Now, woman has always been man’s dependant, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shared the world in equality. And even today woman is heavily handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change. Almost nowhere is her legal status the same as man’s, and frequently it is much to her disadvantage. Even when her rights are legally recognised in the abstract, long-standing custom prevents their full expression in the mores. In the economic sphere men and women can almost be said to make up two castes; other things being equal, the former hold the better jobs, get higher wages, and have more opportunity for success than their new competitors. In industry and politics men have a great many more positions and they monopolise the most important posts. In addition to all this, they enjoy a traditional prestige that the education of children tends in every way to support, for the present enshrines the past – and in the past all history has been made by men. At the present time, when women are beginning to take part in the affairs of the world, it is still a world that belongs to men – they have no doubt of it at all and women have scarcely any. To decline to be the Other, to refuse to be a party to the deal – this would be for women to renounce all the advantages conferred upon them by their alliance with the superior caste. Man-the-sovereign will provide woman-the-liege with material protection and will undertake the moral justification of her existence; thus she can evade at once both economic risk and the metaphysical risk of a liberty in which ends and aims must be contrived without assistance. Indeed, along with the ethical urge of each individual to affirm his subjective existence, there is also the temptation to forgo liberty and become a thing. This is an inauspicious road, for he who takes it – passive, lost, ruined – becomes henceforth the creature of another’s will, frustrated in his transcendence and deprived of every value. But it is an easy road; on it one avoids the strain involved in undertaking an authentic existence. When man makes of woman the Other, he may, then, expect to manifest deep-seated tendencies towards complicity. Thus, woman may fail to lay claim to the status of subject because she lacks definite resources, because she feels the necessary bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity, and because she is often very well pleased with her role as the Other.
But it will be asked at once: how did all this begin? It is easy to see that the duality of the sexes, like any duality, gives rise to conflict. And doubtless the winner will assume the status of absolute. But why should man have won from the start? It seems possible that women could have won the victory; or that the outcome of the conflict might never have been decided. How is it that this world has always belonged to the men and that things have begun to change only recently? Is this change a good thing? Will it bring about an equal sharing of the world between men and women?
These questions are not new, and they have often been answered. But the very fact that woman is the Other tends to cast suspicion upon all the justifications that men have ever been able to provide for it. These have all too evidently been dictated by men’s interest. A little-known feminist of the seventeenth century, Poulain de la Barre, put it this way: ‘All that has been written about women by men should be suspect, for the men are at once judge and party to the lawsuit.’ Everywhere, at all times, the males have displayed their satisfaction in feeling that they are the lords of creation. ‘Blessed be God ... that He did not make me a woman,’ say the Jews in their morning prayers, while their wives pray on a note of resignation: ‘Blessed be the Lord, who created me according to His will.’ The first among the blessings for which Plato thanked the gods was that he had been created free, not enslaved; the second, a man, not a woman. But the males could not enjoy this privilege fully unless they believed it to be founded on the absolute and the eternal; they sought to make the fact of their supremacy into a right. ‘Being men, those who have made and compiled the laws have favoured their own sex, and jurists have elevated these laws into principles’, to quote Poulain de la Barre once more.
Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers, and scientists have striven to show that the subordinate position of woman is willed in heaven and advantageous on earth. The religions invented by men reflect this wish for domination. In the legends of Eve and Pandora men have taken up arms against women. They have made use of philosophy and theology, as the quotations from Aristotle and St Thomas have shown. Since ancient times satirists and moralists have delighted in showing up the weaknesses of women. We are familiar with the savage indictments hurled against women throughout French literature. Montherlant, for example, follows the tradition of Jean de Meung, though with less gusto. This hostility may at times be well founded, often it is gratuitous; but in truth it more or less successfully conceals a desire for self-justification. As Montaigne says, ‘It is easier to accuse one sex than to excuse the other’. Sometimes what is going on is clear enough. For instance, the Roman law limiting the rights of woman cited ‘the imbecility, the instability of the sex’ just when the weakening of family ties seemed to threaten the interests of male heirs. And in the effort to keep the married woman under guardianship, appeal was made in the sixteenth century to the authority of St Augustine, who declared that ‘woman is a creature neither decisive nor constant’, at a time when the single woman was thought capable of managing her property. Montaigne understood clearly how arbitrary and unjust was woman’s appointed lot: ‘Women are not in the wrong when they decline to accept the rules laid down for them, since the men make these rules without consulting them. No wonder intrigue and strife abound.’ But he did not go so far as to champion their cause.
It was only later, in the eighteenth century, that genuinely democratic men began to view the matter objectively. Diderot, among others, strove to show that woman is, like man, a human being. Later John Stuart Mill came fervently to her defence. But these philosophers displayed unusual impartiality. In the nineteenth century the feminist quarrel became again a quarrel of partisans. One of the consequences of the industrial revolution was the entrance of women into productive labour, and it was just here that the claims of the feminists emerged from the realm of theory and acquired an economic basis, while their opponents became the more aggressive. Although landed property lost power to some extent, the bourgeoisie clung to the old morality that found the guarantee of private property in the solidity of the family. Woman was ordered back into the home the more harshly as her emancipation became a real menace. Even within the working class the men endeavoured to restrain woman’s liberation, because they began to see the women as dangerous competitors – the more so because they were accustomed to work for lower wages.
In proving woman’s inferiority, the anti-feminists then began to draw not only upon religion, philosophy, and theology, as before, but also upon science – biology, experimental psychology, etc. At most they were willing to grant ‘equality in difference’ to the other sex. That profitable formula is most significant; it is precisely like the ‘equal but separate’ formula of the Jim Crow laws aimed at the North American Negroes. As is well known, this so-called equalitarian segregation has resulted only in the most extreme discrimination. The similarity just noted is in no way due to chance, for whether it is a race, a caste, a class, or a sex that is reduced to a position of inferiority, the methods of justification are the same. ‘The eternal feminine’ corresponds to ‘the black soul’ and to ‘the Jewish character’. True, the Jewish problem is on the whole very different from the other two – to the anti-Semite the Jew is not so much an inferior as he is an enemy for whom there is to be granted no place on earth, for whom annihilation is the fate desired. But there are deep similarities between the situation of woman and that of the Negro. Both are being emancipated today from a like paternalism, and the former master class wishes to ‘keep them in their place’ – that is, the place chosen for them. In both cases the former masters lavish more or less sincere eulogies, either on the virtues of ‘the good Negro’ with his dormant, childish, merry soul – the submissive Negro – or on the merits of the woman who is ‘truly feminine’ – that is, frivolous, infantile, irresponsible the submissive woman. In both cases the dominant class bases its argument on a state of affairs that it has itself created. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, in substance, ‘The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes.’ This vicious circle is met with in all analogous circumstances; when an individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior. But the significance of the verb to be must be rightly understood here; it is in bad faith to give it a static value when it really has the dynamic Hegelian sense of ‘to have become’. Yes, women on the whole are today inferior to men; that is, their situation affords them fewer possibilities. The question is: should that state of affairs continue?
Many men hope that it will continue; not all have given up the battle. The conservative bourgeoisie still see in the emancipation of women a menace to their morality and their interests. Some men dread feminine competition. Recently a male student wrote in the Hebdo-Latin: ‘Every woman student who goes into medicine or law robs us of a job.’ He never questioned his rights in this world. And economic interests are not the only ones concerned. One of the benefits that oppression confers upon the oppressors is that the most humble among them is made to feel superior; thus, a ‘poor white’ in the South can console himself with the thought that he is not a ‘dirty nigger’ – and the more prosperous whites cleverly exploit this pride.
Similarly, the most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women. It was much easier for M. de Montherlant to think himself a hero when he faced women (and women chosen for his purpose) than when he was obliged to act the man among men – something many women have done better than he, for that matter. And in September 1948, in one of his articles in the Figaro littéraire, Claude Mauriac – whose great originality is admired by all – could write regarding woman: ‘We listen on a tone [sic!] of polite indifference ... to the most brilliant among them, well knowing that her wit reflects more or less luminously ideas that come from us.’ Evidently the speaker referred to is not reflecting the ideas of Mauriac himself, for no one knows of his having any. It may be that she reflects ideas originating with men, but then, even among men there are those who have been known to appropriate ideas not their own; and one can well ask whether Claude Mauriac might not find more interesting a conversation reflecting Descartes, Marx, or Gide rather than himself. What is really remarkable is that by using the questionable we he identifies himself with St Paul, Hegel, Lenin, and Nietzsche, and from the lofty eminence of their grandeur looks down disdainfully upon the bevy of women who make bold to converse with him on a footing of equality. In truth, I know of more than one woman who would refuse to suffer with patience Mauriac’s ‘tone of polite indifference’.
I have lingered on this example because the masculine attitude is here displayed with disarming ingenuousness. But men profit in many more subtle ways from the otherness, the alterity of woman. Here is a miraculous balm for those afflicted with an inferiority complex, and indeed no one is more arrogant towards women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility. Those who are not fear-ridden in the presence of their fellow men are much more disposed to recognise a fellow creature in woman; but even to these the myth of Woman, the Other, is precious for many reasons. They cannot be blamed for not cheerfully relinquishing all the benefits they derive from the myth, for they realize what they would lose in relinquishing woman as they fancy her to be, while they fail to realize what they have to gain from the woman of tomorrow. Refusal to pose oneself as the Subject, unique and absolute, requires great self-denial. Furthermore, the vast majority of men make no such claim explicitly. They do not postulate woman as inferior, for today they are too thoroughly imbued with the ideal of democracy not to recognise all human beings as equals.
In the bosom of the family, woman seems in the eyes of childhood and youth to be clothed in the same social dignity as the adult males. Later on, the young man, desiring and loving, experiences the resistance, the independence of the woman desired and loved; in marriage, he respects woman as wife and mother, and in the concrete events of conjugal life she stands there before him as a free being. He can therefore feel that social subordination as between the sexes no longer exists and that on the whole, in spite of differences, woman is an equal. As, however, he observes some points of inferiority – the most important being unfitness for the professions – he attributes these to natural causes. When he is in a co-operative and benevolent relation with woman, his theme is the principle of abstract equality, and he does not base his attitude upon such inequality as may exist. But when he is in conflict with her, the situation is reversed: his theme will be the existing inequality, and he will even take it as justification for denying abstract equality.
So it is that many men will affirm as if in good faith that women are the equals of man and that they have nothing to clamour for, while at the same time they will say that women can never be the equals of man and that their demands are in vain. It is, in point of fact, a difficult matter for man to realize the extreme importance of social discriminations which seem outwardly insignificant but which produce in woman moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to spring from her original nature. The most sympathetic of men never fully comprehend woman’s concrete situation. And there is no reason to put much trust in the men when they rush to the defence of privileges whose full extent they can hardly measure. We shall not, then, permit ourselves to be intimidated by the number and violence of the attacks launched against women, nor to be entrapped by the self-seeking eulogies bestowed on the ‘true woman’, nor to profit by the enthusiasm for woman’s destiny manifested by men who would not for the world have any part of it.
We should consider the arguments of the feminists with no less suspicion, however, for very often their controversial aim deprives them of all real value. If the ‘woman question’ seems trivial, it is because masculine arrogance has made of it a ‘quarrel’; and when quarrelling one no longer reasons well. People have tirelessly sought to prove that woman is superior, inferior, or equal to man. Some say that, having been created after Adam, she is evidently a secondary being: others say on the contrary that Adam was only a rough draft and that God succeeded in producing the human being in perfection when He created Eve. Woman’s brain is smaller; yes, but it is relatively larger. Christ was made a man; yes, but perhaps for his greater humility. Each argument at once suggests its opposite, and both are often fallacious. If we are to gain understanding, we must get out of these ruts; we must discard the vague notions of superiority, inferiority, equality which have hitherto corrupted every discussion of the subject and start afresh.
Very well, but just how shall we pose the question? And, to begin with, who are we to propound it at all? Man is at once judge and party to the case; but so is woman. What we need is an angel – neither man nor woman – but where shall we find one? Still, the angel would be poorly qualified to speak, for an angel is ignorant of all the basic facts involved in the problem. With a hermaphrodite we should be no better off, for here the situation is most peculiar; the hermaphrodite is not really the combination of a whole man and a whole woman, but consists of parts of each and thus is neither. It looks to me as if there are, after all, certain women who are best qualified to elucidate the situation of woman. Let us not be misled by the sophism that because Epimenides was a Cretan he was necessarily a liar; it is not a mysterious essence that compels men and women to act in good or in bad faith, it is their situation that inclines them more or less towards the search for truth. Many of today’s women, fortunate in the restoration of all the privileges pertaining to the estate of the human being, can afford the luxury of impartiality – we even recognise its necessity. We are no longer like our partisan elders; by and large we have won the game. In recent debates on the status of women the United Nations has persistently maintained that the equality of the sexes is now becoming a reality, and already some of us have never had to sense in our femininity an inconvenience or an obstacle. Many problems appear to us to be more pressing than those which concern us in particular, and this detachment even allows us to hope that our attitude will be objective. Still, we know the feminine world more intimately than do the men because we have our roots in it, we grasp more immediately than do men what it means to a human being to be feminine; and we are more concerned with such knowledge. I have said that there are more pressing problems, but this does not prevent us from seeing some importance in asking how the fact of being women will affect our lives. What opportunities precisely have been given us and what withheld? What fate awaits our younger sisters, and what directions should they take? It is significant that books by women on women are in general animated in our day less by a wish to demand our rights than by an effort towards clarity and understanding. As we emerge from an era of excessive controversy, this book is offered as one attempt among others to confirm that statement.
But it is doubtless impossible to approach any human problem with a mind free from bias. The way in which questions are put, the points of view assumed, presuppose a relativity of interest; all characteristics imply values, and every objective description, so called, implies an ethical background. Rather than attempt to conceal principles more or less definitely implied, it is better to state them openly, at the beginning. This will make it unnecessary to specify on every page in just what sense one uses such words as superior, inferior, better, worse, progress, reaction, and the like. If we survey some of the works on woman, we note that one of the points of view most frequently adopted is that of the public good, the general interest; and one always means by this the benefit of society as one wishes it to be maintained or established. For our part, we hold that the only public good is that which assures the private good of the citizens; we shall pass judgement on institutions according to their effectiveness in giving concrete opportunities to individuals. But we do not confuse the idea of private interest with that of happiness, although that is another common point of view. Are not women of the harem more happy than women voters? Is not the housekeeper happier than the working-woman? It is not too clear just what the word happy really means and still less what true values it may mask. There is no possibility of measuring the happiness of others, and it is always easy to describe as happy the situation in which one wishes to place them.
In particular those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced happy on the pretext that happiness consists in being at rest. This notion we reject, for our perspective is that of existentialist ethics. Every subject plays his part as such specifically through exploits or projects that serve as a mode of transcendence; he achieves liberty only through a continual reaching out towards other liberties. There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future. Every time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence into the ‘en-sois’ – the brutish life of subjection to given conditions – and of liberty into constraint and contingence. This downfall represents a moral fault if the subject consents to it; if it is inflicted upon him, it spells frustration and oppression. In both cases it is an absolute evil. Every individual concerned to justify his existence feels that his existence involves an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in freely chosen projects.
Now, what peculiarly signalises the situation of woman is that she – a free and autonomous being like all human creatures – nevertheless finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other. They propose to stabilise her as object and to doom her to immanence since her transcendence is to be overshadowed and for ever transcended by another ego (conscience) which is essential and sovereign. The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspirations of every subject (ego) – who always regards the self as the essential and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential. How can a human being in woman’s situation attain fulfilment? What roads are open to her? Which are blocked? How can independence be recovered in a state of dependency? What circumstances limit woman’s liberty and how can they be overcome? These are the fundamental questions on which I would fain throw some light. This means that I am interested in the fortunes of the individual as defined not in terms of happiness but in terms of liberty.
Quite evidently this problem would be without significance if we were to believe that woman’s destiny is inevitably determined by physiological, psychological, or economic forces. Hence I shall discuss first of all the light in which woman is viewed by biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism. Next I shall try to show exactly how the concept of the ‘truly feminine’ has been fashioned – why woman has been defined as the Other – and what have been the consequences from man’s point of view. Then from woman’s point of view I shall describe the world in which women must live; and thus we shall be able to envisage the difficulties in their way as, endeavouring to make their escape from the sphere hitherto assigned them, they aspire to full membership in the human race.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

CRIMES AGAINST WOMAN: NAKED REALITIES


Ancient writings reveals that status of woman was that of a Goddess, in different parts of the world before conquer and conquest conceptualized. When civilizations flourished and male dominance emerged through war and conflicts, woman, out of distress, seems to have become more dependant and dormant in her roles of life. But it is astonishing to know that many woman of 21st century, though being educated and enlightened, suffers and sacrifices her ‘self’ and ‘substance’ for others around her. This is not from a feminists view. This is reality. Subordination of woman to men in society has been a phenomenon that has been deeply rooted in our social and cultural setup. But when a woman’s love, purity and tolerance are misunderstood as weakness and is exploited in disguise of dominance & authority, it is lethal and prejudicial. Setting aside all brutal instances of female infanticide, child rape and abuses and stepping on to the phase when a female enters womanhood, we see that she faces the evil eyes of society. Starting off with dirty looks, filthy comments, physical encroachments and harassments, woman are being subject to crimes every day right in front of our eyes & this isn’t a wild story.



Crimes of Honour and Crimes of Passion are mainly the categories of crimes against woman, either with premeditation (dolus premeditates) or without intention (dolus repentinus). “Honour crimes” are those which directly and indirectly interfere with a woman’s integrity, individuality and self respect. It includes Assaults, Harassments, Mental Abuses, Physical Torture, Kidnapping and Abduction, Forced prostitution, Abetment to Suicide, Dowry Demands, Discrimination and Inequality, Denial of Educational Rights, Molestation, Rape, Battering, Defamation, Virginity Testing, Forced Marriages, Domestic Violence, Sexual Violence, the compulsions and threats in the name of relationships to uphold the status of family, taboos as to the right to choose her spouse, seek divorce from an unsuccessful marriage, restrictions as to freedom of movement, ethos as to sexual conducts, etc.

“Crimes of passion” are crimes, which are linked to a ‘love-relationship’ between the perpetrator and the victim, for example between an (ex) husband and (ex)wife or between (ex) lovers and the crime is not perpetrated to defend the family honour, but the “conjugal honour” or the honour of an individual man, or for reasons related to jealousy and frustration. ‘Perpetrators’ of injustice against woman need not always be strangers, it can be brothers, sons, father, uncles, nephews, husband, neighbor, colleague, boy friend or ex-lovers, which even includes mother, sister and sister in laws of a woman. If you consider that this topic is alien to you, then check out the statistic reports published by media, which would reveal that over 32,000 murders, 19,000 rapes, 7500 dowry deaths and 36500 molestation cases were reported as crimes against woman in India in just one year. Unreported instances of domestic violence and sexual harassments run on multiple folds. If you can identify and help someone whom you feel is a victim of such violence, with your words & support as a friend, it would SAVE a life and would be a noble deed. And if you are a perpetrator yourself, STOP doing it, because you have NO RIGHT to take away someone’s life & liberty.


Sexual harassment and rape are two sides of the same coin. Both showcase the power of man to dominate a woman. Both have one victim- ‘women’. Both are barbaric in nature; but many people extenuate sexual harassment to rape, just because the victims are not physically harmed, whereas in rape, the victim is ravished like an animal for the fulfillment of desire and lust of a man. Both have the same object and impact- undermine the integrity of the victim, physically as well as mentally. As observed by Justice Arjit Pasayat (Supreme Court of India):"While a murderer destroys the physical frame of the victim, a rapist degrades and defiles the soul of a helpless female."



Trafficking in woman continues over years because they are many times considered as‘commodities that can be essentially used and reused’ by the perpetrators of various crimes. Many females in our society are lured, deceived, kidnapped or tricked into prostitution irrespective of rural and metro geographic barriers. Trafficker’s takes advantage of poverty levels and innocence of many rural women and recruits them to sex trade, debt bondage, forced labour etc. In urban society,shockingly, educated girl’s fall into traps of sex rackets of fake movie/video makers, virtual defrauders etc. in their desire to become celebrities and to have better life; but finally ending up life in brothels as destitute. Sex trafficking is fueling the HIV/AIDS epidemic and continues to decimate the female population. The economic benefit provided by sex trade is not only to many of the so called perpetrators, but also to various corrupted officials and in promotion of businesses sectors like hotels, airliners, tour operations, porn movie making and website publicity.





Being a Woman is a challenge. Females are considered to be the weaker sex and so most of the times they are subjected to exploitation and oppression. Many females who live on Earth lead downtrodden, suppressed, subjugated, unhappy and compromised life. A real woman is the one who raises her voice against the injustice that is being done to her person and property. Women have the right to physical and mental integrity, the right to life and liberty as that of men. If you are a Woman in distress, please do understand that if you don’t speak for yourself, nobody will do it for you. And it is your primarily responsibility to take care of your health, education and individuality to keep up your self-respect and integrity. Never compromise on your existence.


If ever you feel suffocated and under threat of life, trust your instincts and walk out of the place and/or relationship. A woman’s inner self never betrays her. Trust yourself. Keep your mind alert and be willing to accept changes with a strong will-power. Seek help from family, friends, police and courts without hesitation. There are ample laws, simple procedures and strong jurisprudence which protect a woman from perpetrators of any crime that affects her mental and physical well being. After all, family as well as law & order are meant to protect social well being. If no one helps, HELP YOURSELF AND BE BOLD TO FACE LIFE.



The Satanic Root Of Feminism




August 28, 2009

The Satanic Root Of Feminism


By Tony Dean
Moriah Ministries Australia © 2009



Feminism. Now, this is likely to ruffle a few feathers among those who have swallowed the devilish lies the feminist movement have propagated over the years, so I want to emphasise right from the start that what I'm about to discuss is not an attack against women any more than feminism has women's liberty at heart. Rather it is a revealing of the true origin of feminism and its inherent evil. My research source for this topic comes from Pastor John Macarthur of Grace to You Ministries. Can women serve as elders in the church? Author, Pastor and renown biblical commentator John Macarthur says quite emphatically NO!

Feminism is nothing more than plain old rebellion. I not only stand by that assertion but I want to expand on it because it's a serious issue confronting the church.

When the apostle Paul said in 1 Timothy 2:12 that a woman should not "teach or exercise authority over a man", he did not follow that statement with a caveat or a cultural argument. It has been said that Paul made this statement because under the Jewish religious system of his day women were of a lesser value than men. It was a system that forced women into subservience. Along comes Jesus with a liberating equality amongst believers. According to the historical argument, some of the new female converts were apparently using this new found liberty to stand up in church meetings and publicly ridicule their husbands making a mockery of the orderliness to which Paul felt God was entitled.

While this was indeed the case, this particular argument is missing in Scripture. Rather Paul went all the way back to creation to show that women were not intended to dominate men (vv. 13-14). The reasons he gave are that the woman was created after the man, and that she was deceived when acting independently of his leadership.

Paul goes on to say in 1 Timothy 2:15 that "women shall be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint." Obviously this verse is not talking about women's eternal destiny, it means that they are saved from being second-class citizens through the privilege of rearing children - quite the opposite of what feminism preaches. God designed a woman to fulfill a role in the home that no man ever can (Proverbs 31:10-31; Titus 2:4-5). Our society's current thinking on the woman's role is contrary to the priorities revealed in the Bible. Genesis 3 explains why that conflict exists.

After the Fall, God told the woman, "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you" (Genesis 3:16). This is literally translated: "Your desire will be to rule over your husband, BUT you WILL submit to him." Genesis 4:7 helps us to understand what that verse means. There God told Cain, "Sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it." Exactly the same phrase is used in both passages. So in the same way sin tries to dominate us all, fallen women desire to overpower their husbands, and fallen men tend to oppress them in the same way sin oppresses the sinner. The intended balance, of course, is achieved when men and women lead and submit in a godly manner (Ephesians 5:22-33). Now many believe Feminism had its birth in the 20th century, with the striving of women to have equal rights in voting and wages and privileges, but I want to tell you the roots of Feminism go far, far deeper than that - way back into antiquity - way back to the Garden of Eden in fact and the great deceiver.

Eve was the original feminist who stepped out from under Adam's authority, acted independently and led the whole race into sin and thus the first act in Satan's "feminist" agenda was successful. The key is this, the woman acted independently of her husband's authority and was then deceived - that's what happens as much as some women would like to pretend it doesn't .

Contrary to popular opinion, it is not in God's created order for a man to follow the woman's lead in the same way as it is not in God's created order for Christ (who is the husband) to follow the church (which is His bride).

Today's feminism is packaged in language about victimisation and equal rights, but its essence is sinister and about as far removed from God as you can get. Its agenda is harmful to not only women, but families, marriages, society and the church". That may not be a politically correct thing to say, but I can assure you it is Biblically Correct"!

In Titus chapter 2 verses 3, 4 & 5 the Apostle Paul gives instructions as to how the church is to conduct itself. He says older women are to be reverent in behaviour, not malicious gossips (gossip by the way comes from the Greek word Diabolos, or devil - something to keep in mind) not malicious gossips, not enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good - why? Verse 4, "That they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home (ooh, that's a popular one), kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the Word of God may not be dishonoured (or lit. Blasphemed)." (Sarcasm mine)

Doesn't sound too much like the feminist credo now does it? Quite the opposite in fact which should tell us something about its originator should it not? Author and Pastor John Macarthur says . . . "If there is anything being attacked more viciously than any other it is this matter of the role of young women". He says, "One of the most devastating and debilitating and destructive movements in our day is the feminist movement. It is changing not only the world, but sadly it is changing the church, and as a result, John says, the Word of God is being dishonoured, opponents are having plenty bad to say about us and God our saviour is being dishonoured and shamed. He says "The real feminist agenda is frightening - the real feminist agenda is Satanic. Feminism, with all of its assorted features and its unique companionship with homosexuality is an old heresy that is meant to destroy God's design".

Before, during and after New Testament times there was a religion generally known as Gnosticism. It comes from the Greek word: "To Know". It was the mystical religion of Superior Knowledge. It claimed a higher knowledge than God. It was the same knowledge Satan successfully seduced Eve with (not Adam) in the Garden of Eden.

Feminism is just a repackaging of ancient Gnosticism. The heart and soul of Gnosticism is making yourself into God. It says, "You're the only god that exists. You get in tune with yourself, you find your chi, you elevate yourself - self esteem, self knowledge, self actualisation, self realisation, self fulfilment - whatever your self wants that's how you become God - you just give complete sway to your own self desire".

Echoes of the satanic lie uttered in the Garden of Eden recorded in Genesis 3:5 . . . "and you shall be as gods" or literally little "elohim's"

Gnosticism says that the whole human plight is not because we have moral offences against God but because we are ignorant of human potential.
Paul wrote against all this stuff. Gnosticism is a doctrine of demons from seducing spirits and it's the root of feminism.

In the Gnostic system, Eve dominates Adam and the sexual roles are totally reversed. The early Gnostics wrote that the "divine revealer" (which is the serpent) was feminine. This is what they wrote of this so called divine revealer . . . "I am Androgynous. I am both mother and father since I copulate with myself. I copulate with myself and with those who love me and it is through me alone that the all stands firm. I am the womb that gives shape to the all by giving birth to the light that shines in splendour. I am the aeon to come. I am the fulfilment of the all, that is the glory of . . . the mother."

Believe it or not the Gnostics claimed that the God of the bible is in fear of this higher feminine god. (Getting angry yet?) In the Gnostics religious system, the feminisation of this higher god "wisdom" led directly to the ordination of women. Therefore the ordination of women flowed directly out of the feminisation of deity. (and here's where the fur flies) . . .The Gnostics called Elohim, the God of the Bible, the true devil. They believed that because the creator was impersonal, unknowable and untouchable that it is best expressed as Androgyny, that is: the erasure of male and female distinction and a complete confusion of God's intended roles. That’s' why homosexuality is a curious ally of Feminism. Can you smell the stench of today's lesbian driven political correctness movement in all of this?

Satan's strategy has always been the same. Like the rogue robot in Lost in Space, Destroy God's created order, destroy the integrity of Scripture, destroy the character of God, and destroy the name of Christ. The heart of Gnosticism and Feminism is the same! - that female power is the key to human salvation. The goddess cult is back folks. Radical feminism today is being propelled by the whimsical notion that women must be liberated so they can save humanity.

Its Gnostic roots give it the ideal that: the God of Genesis has to go. He is male, tyrannical, he denies basic human liberties, he demands total obedience, he threatens punishment for evil deeds - consequently (they cry) the original sin is not to be found in man but in God and we've got to get rid of this sinning God. Feminist liberation releases us from this God and from all his evil male values like marriage, fidelity, family, authority and morality. “The serpent Eve wants to set us free” they chant, and the God of the Bible is a jealous tyrant who wants to stand in her way.

Ah yes Tony, but this would never be accepted in the Church. Wanna bet . . . Have a listen to this excremental dribble from Catholic theologian Carol Crist. She says, "I found god in myself and I loved her fiercely". There it is in one statement. Where is God? In myself. What is God? Feminine. The path to new age feminism is the destruction of all male / female distinction. New Age author Charlene Spretnak in her literary diatribe: The Politics Of Women's Spirituality, calls for an end to all Judeo / Christian religion. She believes that they will end the Judeo / Christian religion by a feminist religion of witchcraft that succeeds in overthrowing the global rule of men; . . . in her demented dreams!

Now, despite its claims, Feminism is no longer about equality. It is no longer about the right to vote or the right to be equal in value – it is about revenge. Its goal is the same as Satan's goal - It wants the total erasure of Creational structure and biblical morality.

"And the amazing thing", says John Macarthur, "is that witless Christians get sucked into this stuff". The satanic agenda has always been to destroy human society, and he does that by destroying marriages and ripping the family unit to shreds so that God has no means by which to pass on righteousness from one generation to the next. Prominent author George Gilder warns that "if the feminist agenda, even its most moderate version, is carried through then our society is doomed to years of demoralisation and anarchy possibly ending in a police state".

Look, God has laid out His standards and they are NOT NEGOTIABLE. The bible is crystal clear when it comes to the distinctive roles of both women and men and it's time that not only society but more importantly THE CHURCH started being obedient to it.
Feminism is rooted in rebellion and more over in the great rebel, so please, none of this "Christian Feminist" stuff - they are a contradiction of terms.

Lets have a look at how God expects women to behave in the church, particularly young women, we've already seen how the older women are to be godly mentors. Paul instructs in Titus Chapter 2 and verse 4 that young women are to be Husband Lovers from the Greek word "philandros" it means to be a one man woman - totally devoted to their husbands, not a popular concept in too many circles.

Too many women (and I've heard them say it) well, you don't know my husband, he's a pig, he's unlovable, I don't love him anymore, I don't care for him any more, the feeling's gone, it's all over - you know what? They are all just excuses! The reality is women with this mindset are walking in disobedience! - disobedience to the Word of God. Love your husband is a COMMAND! There are no footnotes to that verse. It doesn't say, "Love your husband unless . . . whatever. It doesn't mean "Love your husbands only while the warm and fuzzies last, while you "FEEL" like it.

The word is AGAPE, it means loving even when you DON'T feel like it. Love is an action remember, it's not a gooey, gushy feeling. Love is about a commitment not a condiment. It's not the love of emotion but the love of devotion.

Women are also to be children lovers "philoteknos". The Word of God, as opposed to the word of the world declares that raising a godly family is a women's highest calling. If you're striving for anything else apart from your family, you're missing the mark and selling yourself and your family short. Of course God calls some women to be single and this doesn't apply to them. They have a calling all their own, unhindered by the demands that come with raising a family.

God calls some women to be single for the Kingdom's sake - not their own sake mind you - for the Kingdom's sake. The same applies to those who are unable to have children. But the standard is that women are to bare children, love them and raise them according to God's way.

Verse 5 says they are to be sensible "sophron" meaning controlling all passion - sound thinking, common sense, right priorities. Now in this generation we have the lesbian driven stupidity of Political Correctness, but God wants women to exercise the opposite train of thought - common sense and Godly sobriety. Verse 6: morally pure, sexually faithful to their husbands, devoted to one man PERIOD! And the bone of all contention, "Workers At Home" or as it's translated in the KJV "Keepers Of The Home". It literally means to be a "guardian of household affairs" - simply put in the Father’s economy a woman's domain (or castle) is her home.
Now the feminists have propagated the dribble that fulfilling this God given ordination is tantamount to oppressive servitude, to paternal domination and should therefore be forsaken. Is it any wonder then why families are falling apart. The reality is that statistically speaking, women who work outside of the home have an expodential amount of extra marital affairs when compared to women who are in the home because they are subject, not to their own husband, but to someone else's husband.

A Godly woman is to be obedient to her husband, and all of this is so that God's Word is not blasphemed. SO THAT GOD'S WORD IS NOT BLASPHEMED! Can you see why Satan is using the feminist movement, deceiving women into walking in rebellion to God? It's so that God's Word is blasphemed!

Ladies, you can turn this around. You MUST turn this around! Feminism is foundationally satanic. It hates women as much as it hates men because it hates God. John Macarthur puts it so succinctly when he says, "Godly women don't impact the world by putting on a suit and by carrying a briefcase; they impact the world by raising a Godly generation of men and women".

You know, just as husbands demonstrate to their children how God relates and responds and cherishes His bride the church in the way he treats his wife, so too does the wife demonstrate to her children how the church is to relate, respond and cherish God in the way she treats her husband. The church submits to God, it doesn't demand equality or superiority. How does feminism fair in this comparison?

Feminism says "Sisters, your freedom, your destiny, your fulfillment lies beyond the home so run to your liberation". Here how God's Word responds to that. Proverbs 7:11 defines the feminist definition of a "Woman" as a prostitute. It reads . . . "She is loud and defiant, her feet never stay at home". In other words, she's not content with God's vocation, she's not content with staying at home and raising a Godly generation, she wants to make her mark in the world rather than at home where God intends for her to place an indelible mark on generations to come. Ladies, Satan and his agent feminism looks on you as a trollop. Feminism has ripped you off! IT HAS RIPPED YOU OFF!

Ladies, you want to change the world? Then do it God's way - through FAMILY.


Source(s):

· John MacArthur, “God's High Cal ling for Women” (tape series), "The Subordination and Equality of Women" (tape 1844), "The Role of the Godly Woman" (tape 1845).

· Moriah Ministries Australia