Caleb Zimmer’s Reviews > The Second Sex > Status Update

“Here is the great secret: the world is other. I myself am other. And I am no longer alone in knowing it. Even better - someone taught me this.”
- Georges Gusdorf (on what love means to men)

“Woman therefore plays an indispensable and capital role in the consciousness man has of himself.” - SdB

“When a sex or a class is condemned to imminence, the mirage of transcendence must be offered to it. It is to man’s total advantage to have God endorse the codes he creates.”

“It is understandable why (from this perspective), women objects to masculine logic. Not only does it have no bearing on her experience, but she also knows that in men’s hands, reason becomes an insidious form of violence.”

I think if I could snap my fingers like Thanos, I might wish for males to never have been necessary for human reproduction. I feel as though even the best individual relations between men and women do not provide respite for the horrible conditions that women are subjected to in a world ruled by men’s ideals. I mourn what safe and happy lives women could have lived if men did not feel threatened by them.

“It is painful to think that woman, the relative being who can only live in a couple, is more often alone than man.” Jules Michelet

“As soon as she thinks, dreams, sleeps, desires, and aspires without orders, she betrays the masculine ideal.”

“Logic in masculine hands is often violence.”

—-> continued from the last quote, which belongs to 38%
“…An infatuated heart thus avoids many disappointments.”

“Of all these myths, none is more anchored in masculine hearts than the feminine mystery… The man who does not understand a woman is happy to replace his subjective deficiency with an objective resistance. Instead of admitting his ignorance, he recognizes the presence of a mystery exterior to himself.” 🔥🔥🔥