In this essay, I argue why Beauvoir’s introduction to the novel The Second Sex and Baldwin’s letter, “My Dungeon Shook,” start in a similar vein. Beauvoir and Baldwin both experience antagonism within themselves, in dealing with the study of women (Beauvoir) and the study of black men (Baldwin) because ‘woman’ and ‘black man’ are conceptualisms that have been authored by white men, in relation to white men, interpellated upon women and black men by white men for ages. These similar introductions into the studies of women and black men parallel the similarity with which both writers attack the misconstrued justifications – science and religion – white men use to construct identities for women and black men as the other, in the duality of the
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Beauvoir’s introduction to The Second Sex highlights this use of biology to portray women as the literal and figurative mutilation of white men. Beauvoir quotes Aristotle, in saying, “The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities … we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness” (xxii). Mutilated of penises, women are rendered inferior to men, due both to their biological composition and how their biological composition affects their nature. Yet, while women are seen as lacking, Beauvoir finds it ironic that white men, or men in general, are not seen as excessive (for having an external appendage), and therefore, having an excessive nature (xxii). She questions how “[the white man] thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection with the world … whereas he regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it?” (xxii). She points out that the converse to the argument used to subordinate women does not subordinate …show more content…
In The Second Sex, Beauvoir exemplifies two ways white men use religion to justify female inferiority. One, some white men have used religion to say that women are an extension, or afterthought, of white men: “Having been created after Adam, she is evidently a secondary being” (xxxiii). More, The Book of Genesis has Eve, or the first women, created from one of Adam’s rib bones: “Eve is depicted as made from what Bossuet called a “supernumerary bone” of Adam” (xxii). From this, white men argue that even the bone from which Eve is constructed is one of many, incidental in its very being. They then view Eve as incidental, and similarly, they view all women as
Beauvoir’s introduction to The Second Sex highlights this use of biology to portray women as the literal and figurative mutilation of white men. Beauvoir quotes Aristotle, in saying, “The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities … we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness” (xxii). Mutilated of penises, women are rendered inferior to men, due both to their biological composition and how their biological composition affects their nature. Yet, while women are seen as lacking, Beauvoir finds it ironic that white men, or men in general, are not seen as excessive (for having an external appendage), and therefore, having an excessive nature (xxii). She questions how “[the white man] thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection with the world … whereas he regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it?” (xxii). She points out that the converse to the argument used to subordinate women does not subordinate …show more content…
In The Second Sex, Beauvoir exemplifies two ways white men use religion to justify female inferiority. One, some white men have used religion to say that women are an extension, or afterthought, of white men: “Having been created after Adam, she is evidently a secondary being” (xxxiii). More, The Book of Genesis has Eve, or the first women, created from one of Adam’s rib bones: “Eve is depicted as made from what Bossuet called a “supernumerary bone” of Adam” (xxii). From this, white men argue that even the bone from which Eve is constructed is one of many, incidental in its very being. They then view Eve as incidental, and similarly, they view all women as