The Study of Women: Defining "Woman"

Introduction to the Study of Women

• The topic of women has been extensively discussed
• Volumes of material haven't clarified the core questions
• The fundamental question remains: What defines a woman?
• Is womanhood a biological attribute, a social construct, or something else entirely?

The Elusive Definition of "Woman"

• Some define a woman by her reproductive function: "Tota mulier in utero: she is a womb"
• This definition excludes certain women deemed not to fit the mold
• The concept of "femininity" is mysterious and endangered
• Femininity lacks a definitive model
• It's often described with vague terms
• Biological and social sciences challenge the notion of immutable characteristics defining womanhood

Challenging Traditional Views

• Femininity may not exist and the word "woman" has no inherent content
• Enlightenment philosophy suggests women are arbitrarily designated
• Nominalism falls short
• It is easy for antifeminists to show that women are not men
• The rejection of eternal feminine notions doesn't negate the existence of women.
• Authenticity is a woman being true to her sex

The Question of Womanhood

• It suggests an answer

The Dichotomy of Sexes

• The idea of writing a book specifically about the situation of men is absurd
• It is taken for granted that being a man requires no further explanation
• Categories of masculine and feminine appear symmetrical on formal documents.
• The relationship between the sexes isn't symmetrical, as man embodies positivity and neutrality.
• In French, "hommes" refers to human beings, with "vir" specifically denoting males
• Woman is often seen as negative, with any definition being a limitation and lacking reciprocity.
• Woman is the negative, she is always wrong

Ancient Views on Gender

• Ancient cultures had an absolute vertical line to define the oblique
• Masculinity is considered the absolute human type
• Woman is defined by her ovaries and uterus, which restricts her to subjectivity
• Man overlooks his own hormones and grasps his body as a normal link
• Woman's body is seen as a prison
• Aristotle saw females as lacking qualities and having defectivness.

Woman as "Other"

• Humanity is male-centric and man defines woman based on her relation to him
• Woman is not considered autonomous
• Man can think of themselves without woman, they can not think of themselves
• Woman is what man wants her to be
• Man sees her as sexed, she is sex in the absolute
• Man is essential
• The Subject and Absolute, while the woman is the "Other"
• The category of Other is original and it is original as consciousness itself
• Duality between Self and Other is found in primitive societies

Alterity in Human Thought

• Division of the sexes didn't always exist but not on empirical grounds
• Alterity is present in couples of Varuna, Mitra, Uranus, and Zeus.
• Alterity appears in good and evil and the fundamental category of human thought and consciousness
• No group defines itself as One without the Other opposite itself.

Group Dynamics

• The presence of three travelers makes the others the "others"
• Villagers see non villagers as suspicious "others"
• Inhabitants of a place view the native of a country as "foreigners"
• The Jews are "others" for the anti-semites
• Blacks are "others" for racist Americans
• Indigenous people are "others" for colonists
• The study of society in depth shows the ability to think biological relations as systems of opposition
• Duality, alternation, opposition, and symmetry is not so much phenomena to explain to explain.

Consciousness and Hostility

• Human reality isn't solely based on solidarity but fundamentally hostile and opposite
• Subject is oppositional and sets up the counter as inessential
• The consciousness has reciprocation and that one is othered
• Locales see neighboring as foreigners and there is war and conflicts with those

Inequality and Domination

• No reciprocity in sexes and that assert themselves is esential
• The defining of alterity is in which way it does and why women don't
• Submit, not spontaneous with the essential of outset .
• It's numerical inequality that helps with having dominance
• One category had managing dominance over the other that had more people.

Historical Contexts of Oppression

• Women aren't a minority
• Opposing groups where once independent and accepted other's autonamy
• Conquest subordinated the weaker to the stronger.
• The Jewish Diaspora, slavery in America are facts with dates
• Oppressed where once share a past, tradition
• They share a past, a tradition, and a culture
• The founded proletariat that are women
• Revolution and the people transformed bourgeois as others

Collective Identity and Action

• Unlike women they do not use we, instead men say women and women adopt that word to refer to themselves
• Russian Revolution and Haiti
• Symbolic to only win what men had
• They take nothing and have received.
• They lack to organize oppositional
• Have no own history of religion unlike Proletariat without having labor of their own

Women's Dispersal and Connections

• Living amongst men, they are tied by homes, work and economic interests
• They tied to their men closely instead of other women.
• They don't have religion and can be solidaritous
• Woman can not want to exterminate males
• Division of the sexes.

The Couple

• The bond is unlike any other to their oppression.
• The opposition took shape
• The couple is a fundamental unit is how the society of sexes isn't possible
• The fundamental characteristic of woman

Reciprocity and Liberation

• Reciprocity would have easier the liberation in omphale vs Hercules
• Slave is linked
• That the master does not have need
• Dependence or hope
• Woman has always been the vassal, and man has never divided the world up equally.
• It is hard for her especially in legal and economically
• Things being equal, the wages higher for better etc
• Tradition reinforced the child's whole education and present which incorporates
• Complicity means renouncing advantages with an alliance in a superior caste.

Metaphysical Risks and Temptations

• Without the goals to economic success.
• Temptation to free from things
• Its an easy path
• Hence there is no clam as subject because sensed in it

Beginning of Domination

• How did the sexuality begin the story
• It has one imposing to succeed superiority
• One of the questions
• The will be more is new and only said
• The men are only and only been done
• About written
• Men have always said there the lord and make them according to this

Male Privilege and Perspective

• Aristotle and Saint Thomas
• Moralists that put women's weaknesses
• It's to just accuse the sex
• What women where not in that and the sex
• To want that Augustine where kept for animal
• They reject it because for the rules of life according to them.

The 18th Century: Objectivity Begins?

• There is in a lot of plotting between them
• It is only deep democrats that champion
• Beings and only to a point that is that force is is because of that.

The Industrial Revolution and Its Impact

• Women enter force and women demands
• Aggression and discredited land
• Has all be the home
• Men tried to lower them and take that away
• It can prove that religion wasn't enough
• That its seperate to the other sex
• Blacks and this where the laws that come up
• This is that to say as black

The Justification Process

• Same with reduction the the good blacks and woman the good.
• It makes those who want to subject
• Then bad with its being understood
• The situation
• To what have been of the have of it .
• The doctor is only stealing a spot
• the Humbler gets over that because of it

Mauriac's Perspective

• Mauriac that who said can only see woman as reflecting their own ideas
• This shows how profit the subtle that anxiety and have some equality.
• Not want that it bring sacrifice of there is
• Today with that all and to say them as that and same to say it but just not want the same.
• They have those demand
• Because of its all to that

Feminist Mistrust and Perspectives

• To have such arguments even though it says
• The people always tried to be perfect but never even get to it
• And all the new and all with even it .
• What can be even come in and will have because of all
• Will even but the public

A Clearer View Without Partiality

• No it's to just even they can
• More be than men
• To what may have been of the new
• What come in and will of it?
• And every to do even
• Because of the fact that because of it.
• And it can even to say it too by it .
• It's that but does not.