Becoming the Other

24 January 16

Why have women always been the Other, while other others have also been one or the
same or the essential to themselves and seen those who other them as the Other?
"Not only is she torn like her brothers, and more acutely, between past and future, but in addition
a conflict breaks out between her originary claim to be subject, activity, and freedom, on the one
hand and, on the other, her erotic tendencies and the social pressure to assume herself as a
passive object. She spontaneously grasps herself as the essential: How will she decide to become
the inessential? If I can accomplish myself only as the Other, how will I renounce my Self?"
(348).
Women are not connected individually by much more than their identification and their
oppression. Their oppression does not stem from a cultural practice or a trait, but rather their
designation as "the Other" by men. Women cannot all rally around the same religion, the same
language, the same experiences, or even the same genitals. They are different than any other
"Others" by their inability to organize. Individually, women are essential, but, as the passage
states, women stake their claim at their "Self" by becoming the passive objects that men project
onto them.
Both Beauvoir and I understand that women are not born into feeling inessential. We are born
with entitlement to all the same opportunities that men are, but through a societal pressure,
become in ourselves the "Other." Women may not consciously choose to become the "Other" or
label themselves as so, but when they renounce the "Self" and become "inessential," they fully
embody the "Other" that they are designated as.
Beauvoir, Simone de, Constance Borde, and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. 2010. The second sex.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf.