The Other
In it Beauvoir argues that women throughout history have been defined as the "other" sex, an aberration from the "normal" male. Men have objectified women in a case of Hegel's master-slave dialectic. Beauvoir's solution is for men and women to see themselves as both subjects and objects. Beauvoir wrote the book after attempting to write about herself. The first thing she wrote was that she was a woman, but she realized that she needed to define what a woman was, which became the intent of the book. She concludes The Second Sex with a picture of a future in which men and women are equals: "recognizing each other as subject, each will remain an other for the other...."
Read more about this topic: The Second Sex
Famous quotes containing the words the other and/or the:
“If someone does something we disapprove of, we regard him as bad if we believe we can deter him from persisting in his conduct, but we regard him as mad if we believe we cannot. In either case, the crucial issue is our control of the other: the more we lose control over him, and the more he assumes control over himself, the more, in case of conflict, we are likely to consider him mad rather than just bad.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“You survived because you were the first.
You survived because you were the last.
Because alone. Because the others.
Because on the left. Because on the right.
Because it was raining. Because it was sunny.
Because a shadow fell.”
—Wislawa Szymborska (b. 1923)