Simone de Beauvoir

Everything that has been written by men

about women should be viewed with suspicion,

because they are both judge and party.

“Everything that men have written about women should be viewed with suspicion, because they are both judge and party,”

“Blessed be the Lord our God, and the Lord of all worlds that has not made me a woman,”

“Blessed be the Lord for creating me according to his will.”

“Women are not wrong at all when they reject the rules of life that have been introduced into the world, inasmuch as it is the men who have made these without them. There is a natural plotting and scheming between them and us.”

like man, woman is a human being

very often their attempt to polemicize robs them of all value. If the “question of women” is so trivial, it is because masculine arrogance turned it into a “quarrel”; when people quarrel, they no longer reason well

Woman? Very simple, say those who like simple answers: She is a womb, an ovary; she is a female: this word is enough to define her.

Referring to a book—a very irritating one at that—Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, Dorothy Parker wrote: “I cannot be fair about books that treat women as women. My idea is that all of us, men as well as women, whoever we are, should be considered as human beings.” But nominalism is a doctrine that falls a bit short; and it is easy for antifeminists to show that women are not men. Certainly woman like man is a human being; but such an assertion is abstract; the fact is that every concrete human being is always uniquely situated. To reject the notions of the eternal feminine, the black soul, or the Jewish character is not to deny that there are today Jews, blacks, or women: this denial is not a liberation for those concerned but an inauthentic flight. Clearly, no woman can claim without bad faith to be situated beyond her sex.

I used to get annoyed in abstract discussions to hear men tell me: “You think such and such a thing because you’re a woman.” But I know my only defense is to answer, “I think it because it is true,” thereby eliminating my subjectivity; it was out of the question to answer, “And you think the contrary because you are a man,” because it is understood that being a man is not a particularity; a man is in his right by virtue of being man; it is the woman who is in the wrong.