sex and sexuality: simone de beauvoir and judith butler

Sex and Sexuality De Beauvoir and Butler

Remy Low

Existential Psychoanalysis: Philosophical foundations

Sydney School of Continental Philosophy

2015

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

“If one wants to burst a bag of hot air one must not pat it but rather dig in one's nails.”

(from Force of Circumstances)

Simone de Beauvoir: Existentialism as literature

“In my novels… I set great store by nuances and ambiguities. My essays reflect my practical options and my intellectual certitudes; my novels, the astonishment into which I am thrown by the whole and the details our human condition.”

• “*Beauvoir+ preferred writing literature over

writing straight philosophy because philosophy spoke with ‘abstract voices’ whereas literature allowed her to communicate experience without claiming a definitive interpretation of the human condition.” (Scholz, 2000)

Simone de Beauvoir: Disclosure

“When she was not there, the smell of dust, the half-light, the forlorn solitude, all this did not exist for anyone; it did not exist at all… She exercised this power: her presence revived things from their inanimateness; she gave them their color, their smell... It was as if she had been entrusted with a mission: she had to bring to life this forsaken theatre filled with darkness… She alone released the meaning of these abandoned places, of these slumbering things.”

(from She Came To Stay)

Simone de Beauvoir: Disclosure

• “This scene is significant in that it presents a literary argument for the existence of individual consciousness and for the presence of the external world while also claiming that the individual existent is the author of meaning.” (Scholz, 2000)

Simone de Beauvoir: Others

“It’s quite true that everyone experiences his own conscience as an absolute. How can several absolutes be compatible? The problem is as great a mystery as birth and death, in fact, it’s such a problem that philosophers break their heads over it.” (from She Came To Stay)


Murder Reciprocity

“Each consciousness seeks the death of the other” (from epigraph; cf. Hegel) “I hate these compromises. If you can’t have the sort of life you want, you might as well be dead.” “Right or wrong, she no longer considered Xaviere’s words as mere outbursts: they contained a complete set of values that ran counter to hers. She might refuse to recognise them, but their existence was none the less invidious.”

“They did not always see it from the same angle, for through their individual desires, moods, or pleasures each discovered a different aspect. But it was, for all that, the same life.” “The moment you acknowledge my conscience, you know that I acknowledge one in you too.”

(from She Came To Stay)


Isolation Reciprocity

“As freedom, the other is radically separated from me; no connection can be created from me to this pure interiority upon which even God would have no hold.”

“I need *others’ consciousness+ because once I have surpassed my own goals, my actions will fall back on themselves, inert and useless, if they have not been carried off toward a new future by new projects. *…+ freedom is the only reality I cannot transcend.”

(from Pyrrhus and Cineas)


Under what conditions, if any, may I speak for/ in the name of another? • Faulty thinking= “Let’s suppose the other

needed me and that his existence had an absolute value. Then my being is justified, since I am for a being whose existence is justified.”

• Right thinking= “I can never create anything

for the other except points of departure.”

(from Pyrrhus and Cineas)


• “I need others to take up my projects if they are to have a future… Though I find myself in a world of value and meaning, these values and meanings were brought into the world by others. I am free to reject, alter or endorse them for the meaning of the world is determined by human choices. Whatever choice I make, however, I cannot support it without the help of others. My values will find a home in the world only if others embrace them; only if I persuade others to make my values theirs.” (Bergoffen, 2014)

Simone de Beauvoir: Ambiguity

Man knows and thinks this tragic ambivalence which the animal and the plant merely undergo. A new paradox is thereby introduced into his destiny… he escapes from his natural condition without, however, freeing himself from it. He is still a part of this world of which he is a consciousness. He asserts himself as a pure internality against which no external power can take hold, and he also experiences himself as a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things.” (from The Ethics of Ambiguity)


• 5 failed ways of dealing with ambiguity… (from The Ethics of Ambiguity)

Sub-man

Unquestioning obedience to someone or something

Serious man

Fanatical or zealous devotion to someone or something

Nihilst

Crushes other people’s freedom to express self

Adventurer

Always seeking to escape from norms and rules by outlandish acts

Passionate man

Throwing self wholly into object of affection


“For the time being it is enough for us to have established the fact that the words ‘to will oneself free’ have a positive and concrete meaning. If man wishes to save his existence, as only he himself can do, his original spontaneity must be raised to the height of moral freedom by taking itself as an end through the disclosure of a particular content.”

“The truth is that in order for my freedom not to risk coming to grief against the obstacle which its very engagement has raised, in order that it might still pursue its movement in the face of the failure, it must, by giving itself a particular content, aim by means of it at an end which is nothing else but precisely the free movement of existence.”

(from The Ethics of Ambiguity)

However…


“Perhaps it is permissible to dream of a future when men will know no other use of their freedom than this free unfurling of itself; constructive activity would be possible for all; each one would be able to aim positively through his projects at his own future.

But today the fact is that there are men who can justify their life only by a negative action. As we have already seen, every man transcends himself. But it happens that this transcendence is condemned to fall uselessly back upon itself because it is cut off from its goals. That is what defines a situation of oppression.”



True freedom= Reciprocal

“A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; [therefore] the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom.”



• “In describing the different ways that freedom is evaded or misused, Beauvoir distinguishes ontological from ethical freedom. She shows us that acknowledging our freedom is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for ethical action. To meet the conditions of the ethical, freedom must be used properly. It must, according to Beauvoir, embrace the ties that bind me to others, and take up the appeal – an act whereby I call on others, in their freedom, to join me in bringing certain values, projects, conditions into being.” (Bergoffen, 2014)

Simone de Beauvoir: The second sex

• “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.” (from The Second Sex)

• https://youtu.be/VmEAB3ekkvU?t=1m44s

https://youtu.be/VmEAB3ekkvU?t=1m44s




“When an individual or a group of individuals is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he or they are inferior... Yes, woman in general are today inferior to men; that is, their situation provides them with fewer possibilities: the question is whether this state of affairs must be perpetuated.” (from The Second Sex)


“Woman is not a fixed reality but a becoming.” (from The Second Sex)

• “*E+xistentially speaking, no human being, male or female, is ever a fixed reality… To trace the roots of women’s social inferiority back to forgotten or hazily remembered childhood incidents is to interiorise he process.” (Arp, 2012)

“All psychoanalysts systematically reject the idea of choice and the correlated concept of value, and therein lies the intrinsic weakness of the system. Having dissociated compulsions and prohibitions from the free choice of the existent… *Freud+ endeavoured to replace the idea of value with that of authority.” (from The Second Sex)

• “Beauvoir’s existentialism sees the individual subject always in relation to the world, and to the other people who populate it. Without the mediation of history and society, a human being with female anatomy could not become a woman.” (Arp, 2012)


Woman as Other to man:

“the subject posits itself only in opposition; it asserts itself as the essential and sets up the other as inessential, as the object.”

…

“If I want to define myself, I first have to say, ‘I am a woman’”

…

She is determined and differentiated in relation to man, while he is not in relation to her; she is the inessential in front of the essential. He is the Subject; he is the Absolute. She is the Other.”

(From The Second Sex)


• “The situation of women is comparable to the condition of the Hegelian Other in that men, like the Hegelian Master, identify themselves as the Subject, the absolute human type, and, measuring women by this standard of the human, identify them as inferior. Women’s so-called inadequacies are then used as justification for seeing them as the Other and for treating them accordingly… Unlike the Other of the master-slave dialectic, women are not positioned to rebel.” (Bergoff, 2014)


• Transcendence vs. Immanence

“The perspective we have adopted is one of existentialist morality. Every subject posits itself as a transcendence concretely, though projects; it accomplishes its freedom only by perpetual surpassing toward other freedoms; there is no other justification for present existence than its expansion toward an indefinitely open future. Every time transcendence lapses into immanence, there is degradation of existence into ‘in-itself,’ of freedom into facticity; this fall is a moral fault if the subject consents to it; if this fall is inflicted on the subject, it takes the form of frustration and oppression; in both cases it is an absolute evil.” (from The Second Sex)


• “Immanence is associated with sinking back into the material side of existence, passivity, confinement to the present. Transcendence is conscious activity, a reaching beyond the situation one finds oneself in at any moment… Woman is constituted as a creature who dos not exist as transcendence but as immanence – not wholly a material entity but a nature raised to the transparency of consciousness.” (Arp, 2012)

Simone de Beauvoir: The second sex “The fact that the woman lives her body as object as well as subject. The source of this is that patriarchal society defines woman as object, as a mere body, and that in sexist society women are in fact frequently regarded by others as objects and mere bodies. An essential part of the situation of being a woman is that of living the ever-present possibility that one will be gazed upon as a mere body, as shape and flesh that presents itself as the potential object of another subject’s intentions and manipulations, rather than as a living manifestation of action and intention. (Iris Marion Young, “Throwing like a girl”, 1980)


Woman as Other to herself:

“For the girl, erotic transcendence consists in making herself prey in order to make a catch. She becomes an object; and she grasps herself as object; she is surprised to discover this new aspect of her being: it seems to her that she has been doubled; instead of coinciding exactly with her self, here she is existing outside of her self.”

(from The Second Sex)


“To the extent that a woman lives her body as a thing, she... is inhibited, and retains a distance from her body as transcending movement and from engagement in the world’s possibilities.”

(Iris Marion Young, “Throwing like a girl”, 1980)


Woman as Other to other women:

“The woman knows the male code is not hers… she then asks other women to help her to define a sort of ‘parallel law,’ a specifically feminine moral code. It is not only out of malevolence that women comment on and criticize the conduct of their girlfriends so much: to judge them and to lead their own lives, they need much more moral invention than men.

...

Hence woman makes no claim for herself as subject because she lacks the concrete means, because she senses the necessary link connecting her to man without positing its reciprocity, and because she often derives satisfaction from her role as the Other.



“Refusing to be the Other, refusing complicity with man, would mean renouncing all the advantages an alliance with the superior caste confers on them.

…

*I+n woman… freedom remains abstract and empty, it cannot authentically assume itself except in revolt: this is the only way open to those who have no chance to build anything; they must refuse the limits of their situation and seek to open paths to the future.”


Simone de Beauvoir: Analytic implications

• “we discover that the ethical-political issue of fulfillment does not concern a woman’s happiness. Happiness may be chosen or accepted in exchange for the deprivations of freedom.” (Bergoff, 2014)

• “Beauvoir’s key message still stands: women should stop trying so hard to please their lovers at the expense of pursuing a rich and diversified life In The Second Sex, Beauvoir outlines a definition of authentic loving and four key elements characterize it: respecting each other’s freedom, appreciating oneself as both subject and other, transcending together, and mutually creating meaning.” (Cleary, 2015)

Simone de Beauvoir: Analytic implications • “What is not a matter of dispute is that The Second Sex gave us the

vocabulary for analyzing the social constructions of femininity and a method for critiquing these constructions. By not accepting the common sense idea that to be born with female genitalia is to be born a woman this most famous line of The Second Sex pursues the first rule of phenomenology: identify your assumptions, treat them as prejudices and put them aside; do not bring them back into play until and unless they have been validated by experience.” (Bergoff, 2014)

• “‘Masculinity’ refers to the behaviors, social roles, and relations of men within a given society as well as the meanings attributed to them. The term masculinity stresses gender [performances]... Despite the fact that gender is often experienced as intensely personal – an internal facet of our identity - masculinities are produced and reproduced through the course of our daily interactions as well as within the larger institutions of society.” (Kimmel & Bridges, 2011)

Judith Butler (1956-)

“Indeed it may be only by risking the incoherence of identity that connection is possible.”

(from Bodies that Matter)

Judith Butler (1956-)

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/32

Judith Butler: Sex ≠ Gender

“The presumption of a causal or mimetic relation between sex and gender is undermined. If being a woman is one cultural interpretation of being female, and if that interpretation is in no way necessitated by being female, then it appears that the female body is the arbitrary locus of the gender 'woman', and there is no reason to preclude the possibility of that body becoming the locus of other constructions of gender.

At its limit, then, the sex/gender distinction implies a radical heteronomy of natural bodies and constructed genders with the consequence that 'being' female and 'being' a woman are two very different sorts of being. This last insight, I would suggest, is the distinguished contribution of Simone de Beauvoir's formulation, ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.’”

(from ‘Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex’, 1986)


“For Simone de Beauvoir, it seems, the verb ‘become’ contains a consequential ambiguity. Gender is not only a cultural construction imposed upon identity, but in some sense gender is a process of constructing ourselves. To become a woman is a purposive and appropriative set of acts, the acquisition of a skill, a ‘project’… to assume a certain corporeal style and significance.

…

Simone de Beauvoir's account of 'becoming' a gender reconciles the internal ambiguity of gender as both 'project' and 'construct'. When 'becoming' a gender is understood to be both choice and acculturation, then the usually oppositional relation between these terms is undermined… Her theory of gender, then, entails a reinterpretation of the existential doctrine of choice whereby 'choosing' a gender is understood as the embodiment of possibilities within a network of deeply entrenched cultural norms.”

(from ‘Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex’, 1986)


Gender as performative: “Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act… a ‘doing’ rather than a ‘being’” … Gender is the repeated stylisation of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.” (from Gender Trouble)

• http://bigthink.com/videos/your-behavior-creates-your-gender

http://bigthink.com/videos/your-behavior-creates-your-gender










Judith Butler: Sex ≠ Gender ≠ Sexuality

“There can be transgendered men who desire other men. There can be transgendered men who desire women. There can be transgendered women who like lesbians or who like heterosexual men or who like both or don’t like either. So in a way we can’t draw conclusions on the basis of gender, gender presentation in particular, about what a person’s sexuality might be. A man who reads effeminate may well be consistently heterosexual and another one might be gay. We can’t read sexuality off of gender. We can’t derive sexuality from gender.” (from http://bigthink.com/in-their-own-words/the-difference-between-sex-and-gender)

http://bigthink.com/in-their-own-words/the-difference-between-sex-and-gender


















Judith Butler: Analytic implications

• “Although patients may refer to ‘male’ or ‘female’ clothes, attitudes, mannerisms, thinking styles and interests, it is the task of the therapist in this specially adapted therapeutic work to ‘de-gender’ the things that patients have ‘gendered’ in their minds. Long-standing ‘gendering’ adds to identity confusion when individuals find themselves mismatched with the perceived gendered framework. If aspects of themselves are identified as qualities they had classified as ‘male’ or ‘female’, a gender conflict will be reinforced if these are incongruent with their biological sex.”

• “Therapists working in gender identity disorder need to adopt an open and accepting attitude: a formulaic approach can interfere with their understanding of patients’ difficulties. Both therapists and patients need to differentiate between the concepts of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, the former having an organic basis and the latter being a psychosocial construct. Therapists must be open and accepting of patients, who may not conform to a binary heterosexist framework of gender identity and whose identities may be more fluid and indeterminate.” (Hakeem, 2012)

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sex and sexuality: simone de beauvoir and judith butler

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