One is not born a woman, one becomes one. - Simone de Beauvoir

But if man is free to define for himself the conditions of a life which is valid in his own eyes, can he not choose whatever he likes and act however he likes? Dostoievsky asserted, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” Today’s believers use this formula for their own advantage. To re-establish man at the heart of his destiny is, they claim, to repudiate all ethics. However, far from God’s absence authorizing all license, the contrary is the case, because man is abandoned on the earth, because his acts are definitive, absolute engagements. He bears the responsibility for a world which is not the work of a strange power, but of himself, where his defeats are inscribed, and his victories as well.

The thing I understood least of all was that knowledge led to despair and damnation. Our spiritual mentor had not said that those bad books had given a false picture of life: if that had been the case, he could easily have exposed their falsehood; the tragedy of the little girl whom he had failed to bring to salvation was that she had made a premature discovery of the true nature of reality. Well, anyhow, I thought, I shall discover it myself one day, and it isn’t going to kill me: the idea that there was a certain age when knowledge of the truth could prove fatal I found offensive to common sense.

Porque não contestam as mulheres a soberania do macho? Nenhum sujeito se coloca imediata e espontaneamente como não essencial; não é o Outro que, definindo-se como Outro, define o Um; ele é posto como Outro pelo Um definindo-se como Um. Mas para que o Outro não se transforme no Um é preciso que se sujeite a esse ponto de vista alheio. De onde vem essa submissão na mulher?