In proving woman's inferiority, the anitfeminists then began to draw not only upon religion, philosophy, and theology, as before, but also upon science-biology, experimental psychology, etc. At most they were willing to grant "equality in different" to the other sex.

"equal but separate"
This so-called equalitarian segregation has resulted only in the most extreme discrimination.

p. xxix
Simone Beauvoir
'The Second Sex'

Claude Mauriac: 'We listen on a tone [sic!] of polite indifference... to the most brilliant among them, well knowing that her wit reflects more or less luminously ideas that come from us.' Evidently the speaker referred to is not reflecting the ideas of Mauriac himself, for no one knows of his having any. It may be that she reflects ideas originating with men, but then, even among men there are those who have been known to appropriate ideas not their own; and one can well ask whether Claude Mauriac might not find more interesting a conversation reflecting Descartes, Marx, or Gide rather than himself. What is really remarkable is that by using the questionable we he identifies himself with St. Paul, Hegel Lenin, and Nietzsche, and from the lofty eminence of their grandeur looks down disdainfully upon th bevy of women who make bold to converse with him on a footing of equality.

One of the benefits that oppression confers upon the oppressors is that the most humble among them is made to feel superior; thus, a "poor white" in the South can console himself with the thought that he is not a "dirty nigger" and the more prosperous whites cleverly exploit this pride.

People have tirelessly sought to prove that woman is superior, inferior, or equal to man. Some say that, having been created after Adam, she is evidently a secondary being; others say on the contrary that Adam was only a rough draft and that God succeeded in producing the human being in perfection when He created Eve. Woman's brain is smaller; yes, but it is relatively larger. Christ was made a man; yes, but perhaps for his greater humility. Each argument at one suggests its opposite, and both are often fallacious.

Now, what peculiarly signalizes the situation of woman is tha she - a free and autonomous being like all human creatures - nevertheless finds herself linving a world hwere men compel her to assume the status of the Other. They propose to stabilize her as object and to doom her to immanence since her transcendence is to be overshadowed and forever transcended by another ego (conscience) which is essential and sovereign. The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspirations of verey subject (ego) - who always regards the self as the essential - and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential. How can a human being in woman's situation attain fulfillment? What roads are open to her? Which are blocked? How can independence be recovered in a stat of dependency? What circumstances limit woman's liberty an dhow can they be overcome? These are the fundamental questions on which I would fain throw some light. This means that I am interested in the fortunes of the individual as defined not in terms of happiness but in terms of liberty.

Quite evidently this problem would be without significance if we were to believe that woman's destiny is inevitably determined by physiological, psychological, or economic forces. Hence I shall discuss first of all the light in which woman is viewed by biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism. Next I shall try to show exactly how the concept of the "truly feminine" has been fashioned - why womans has been defined as the Other - and what have been the consequences from man's point of view. Then from woman's point of view I shall describe the world in which women must live; and thus we shall be able to envisage of the difficulties in their way as, endeavoring to make their escape from the sphere hitherto assigned them, they aspire to full membership in the human race.

Woman is a happy accident[?]