Chapter 31 Chapter 21 The Situation and Characteristics of Women

Chapter 21 The Situation and Characteristics of Women We can now see why the accusations against women from ancient Greece to the present have so many common features.Her position, too, is constantly undergoing superficial changes, and this position defines what is called a woman's "character": she is "obsessed with interiority", she is perverted, she is worldly and narrow-minded, she lacks judgment for fact or precision , she has no moral consciousness, she is a despicable utilitarian, she is hypocritical, artificial, selfish, and so on.There is an element of truth in all of these.But the only thing we must mention is that none of the behaviors described here are imposed on a woman by the female hormones or by the innate structure of the female brain: they are molded by her situation.From this point of view we shall endeavor to make a comprehensive examination of the position of woman.It would be somewhat repetitive, but it would also allow me to recognize the timeless femininity of everywhere within the overall constraints of her economy, society, and history.

Sometimes the "women's world" is used in contrast to the world of men, but again we must insist that women have never constituted a closed, independent society; they are an integral part of the human subordinate in the group.Their union is only the mechanical solidarity based on the mere fact of their resemblance, but they lack that organic solidarity which is the basis of every unified community; in the days of the Eleusinian mysteries as today in clubs, salons, and social services. , they are always forced to unite in order to build an opposite world, but she always builds within the framework of the male world.Hence the paradox of their situation: they belong at the same time to the masculine world and to the sphere that challenges it; Yi Ansheng.Their meekness must always be accompanied by rejection, and their rejection must always be accompanied by acceptance.Their attitude in this respect is similar to that of girls, but it is more difficult to persist, because for middle-aged and elderly women, it is not only a matter of dreaming her life through symbols, but also of living life to the end in reality.

Woman herself admits that the world as a whole is masculine; it was men who shaped it, ruled it, and still dominate it.As for her, she doesn't feel responsible for it; she's inferior and dependent, which is understandable; she hasn't taken a class in violence, and she's never stood up as a subject with her head held high in front of the rest of the group.She is enclosed in her body and her family, so she sees herself as passive before these gods who have human faces, set goals and establish values.In this sense, it is true to say that she is a "child who will never grow up".Workers, niggers, and natives of the colonies were also called children who grew up—so long as they did not inspire fear; which meant accepting beyond question the truth and the laws other men had made for them.It is the destiny of a woman to be honorable obedience.She has no grasp of the reality around her, even in her mind.It is opaque to her eyes.

It's also true that she lacks the technical training that would have made it possible for her to dominate things.As far as she is concerned, she is not directly confronted with things, but with life; life cannot be controlled by means of tools: one can only obey its mysterious laws.For woman, the world is not, as Heidegger prescribes, an "instrumental assembly" between her will and her goals; rather, it is something stubbornly resisting, invincible; Yu Tianming is full of mysterious capriciousness.This blood-red strawberry mystery that turned her mother into a human being was a mystery that no mathematical formula could equalize, no machine could speed up or slow down; she felt that even the most delicate A continuous force that neither the machine could divide nor multiply; she felt it in her own body, governed by the rhythms of the lunar rhythms, maturing and then corrupting as the years passed.The kitchen also teaches her patience and passivity every day; there is alchemy here; one must obey fire and water, one must wait for sugar to dissolve, dough to ferment, and also for washed things to dry, and for fruit to ripen on the shelf .Household activities are close to technical operations, but they are too rudimentary and monotonous to demonstrate to women the laws of mechanical causality; moreover, even here things are capricious; some things are to be washed and some are not; Some dirt can be removed, and some dirt cannot be removed;

Something broke itself, and the dust grew like a plant. The consciousness of agricultural civilization, which worships the magic of the land, endures because of the consciousness of woman: she believes in magic.Since her sexual love is passive, she sees desire not as will or aggressiveness, but as an attraction that sinks a magic wand; the mere presence of her body can cause male sexual organs to become erect, Why shouldn't the hidden fluid make the little hazel stick quiver?She felt she was surrounded by waves, radiation, mystical fluids; she believed in telepathy, astrology, radiation therapy, hypnotism, theosophy, telekinetics, clairvoyance, and faith healing; her religion was full of primitive superstitions: candles , an answered prayer; she believed the saints were ancient spirits of nature: this one protected a tourist, another a woman in labor, and another found a lost thing; and, of course, nothing strange could surprise her .She is in an attitude of entreaty and prayer; she will perform certain ceremonies which are very effective in order to achieve a certain result.

It is easy to see why a woman is stuck in a rut; time has brought nothing fresh to her, it is not a creative flow; and since she is doomed to repetition, she sees the future as nothing but a reproduction of the past.If one understands the word and the formula, duration associates itself with fertility—but this is itself governed by the rhythms of the months and seasons; each cycle of pregnancy, each cycle of flowering, Precisely reproduces the previous cycle.Time's sole function in this play of periodic phenomena is to cause slow decay: it wears out furniture and clothes, it disfigures the countenance; fertility is gradually destroyed by the passing years.So women simply don't trust this relentless force designed to destroy.

Not only was she ignorant of what a real action could change the face of the world, but she was lost in the middle of it, as if at the center of a vast and obscure nebula.She is unfamiliar with using partisan logic.Stendhal thinks she can master it as well as a man, if she is compelled by necessity.But it's a tool she rarely gets a chance to use.Syllogisms were of little help in making mayonnaise or coaxing a crying child; logical reasoning was entirely inappropriate for the reality she had to deal with.Since she has nothing to do in the world of men, her thoughts don't flow into any design, it's almost like daydreaming.She has no powers of observation, no judgment of the truth; she can take nothing seriously but empty words and fantasies, which is why even the most contradictory claims do not disturb her; She could explain the mysteries of the celestial bodies thoroughly, although in every respect it was beyond her reach.To her own ends she was content to use the most vague notions, to confuse parties, ideas, places, persons, and events; her mind was full of strange confusions.

However, Dongda affairs are not her thing after all, because she has always been taught to accept male authority.So she gave up independent criticism, investigation, and judgment, leaving everything to that superior class.She therefore felt that the male world seemed to be a transcendent reality, an absolute."Men make gods," says Fraser, "and women worship gods." Men cannot kneel before their idols with total satisfaction; They were not fabricated by hand, so he bowed his head obediently.They especially like having order and power reflected in their leaders. In every Olympus there is a supreme god; the magical masculine essence must be condensed in an archetype, of which father, husband, lover are but feeble reflections.It would be harsh to say that their worship of this great totem was sexual in nature; but it is true that through it they would fully satisfy their childhood dreams of submissive kneeling.

In France, marshals such as Boulanger-Pétain and de Gaulle have always been supported by women.People will still remember how excitedly the female reporters praised Tito and his dazzling military uniform in the Communist Party's "Humanite".This marshal, this dictator—with his piercing eyes and square jaw—is the holy father to whom all serious and righteous people want, the absolute guarantor of all values.The impotence and ignorance of women are the reasons why they respect heroes and the laws of the male world; they accept these heroes and laws not by sound judgment but by faith--and faith acquires its fanatical force Due to the fact that it is not knowledge: it is blind, passionate, obstinate, stupid; its assumptions are unconditional, anti-rational, anti-historical, admitting no negation.

This obstinate reverence, depending on the circumstances, may take one or the other of two forms: to which the woman is passionately devoted, may either be the content of the law, or it may be merely its empty form. .If she belongs to the privileged elite that benefits from the established order, she will want that order to be unshakable and will be extraordinarily uncompromising in her insistence on this desire.Man knows that he can establish different institutions, another ethic, a new code of law; he realizes that he has the power to go beyond the existing, and he sees history as a becoming.Even the most conservative man knows a certain evolution is inevitable, and realizes that he must adapt his actions to it; but woman has no part in history, she cannot understand its inevitability; she is full of doubts, uncertain about the future , wanting to stop the flow of time.If the idols set up by her father, brother, and husband were destroyed, she would not try to move into a new god, but frantically defend the old one.

During the American Civil War, no Southerner defended slavery more than a woman.During the Boer War in England, and during the Commune in France, women were also the most militant.They attempt to compensate for their inertia by displaying strong emotions.With victory won, they would pounce like hyenas on a rout; failing that, they flatly refused any attempt at mediation.Their thinking was nothing more than a gesture, and so they flouted their support for the most outdated causes: they could have been champions of the legitimate monarchy in 1914 and supporters of the Tsar in 1953. A man sometimes encourages them with a smile, because he finds it amusing to see the frenzied reactions his thoughts, expressed in more measured terms, provoke in them; The stupid and stubborn appearance is really annoying. This indomitable attitude can only be exhibited by women if they are in a perfectly complete civilization and social class.In general, she respects the law only because it is the law, because her faith is blind; even if the law changes, it retains its appeal.In a woman's mind, power is right, because the right she sees in men depends on their power.Thus, when society crumbles, it is women who fall first at the conqueror's feet.In short, they accept what exists.Resignation to fate is one of their distinguishing characteristics.When the ruins of Pompeii were unearthed, it was noticed that the charred remains of the men held positions of defiant defiance of the gods or trying to escape, while the remains of the women were curled up with their faces on the ground and The look of submission.Women feel they are powerless against things, against volcanoes, policemen, protectors, men.They said, "Women are born to suffer; that's life—what can be done about it!" This attitude of resignation to fate has given women a patience that is often envied by others.They tolerate physical pain better than men; they can muster courageous abstinence when circumstances call for it; many women are known for their dogged composure in passive defiance, though lacking the aggressive recklessness of men.They are more active than their husbands in the face of crisis, poverty, and misfortune; they respect the continuity of time, which haste cannot overcome--so they do not limit their time when doing things.When they apply poise and tenacity to a cause, they sometimes achieve astonishing success. "Don't underestimate the power of women".Resignation expresses restraint in the generous woman: she tolerates everything and never condemns anyone because she believes that no one or anything can be anything other than what it is.Self-respecting women can make resignation a virtue, as did Madame de Charrière.But it also induces a kind of unhelpful caution; women always want to maintain, adapt, and arrange rather than destroy and rebuild; they prefer to compromise and adjust than to revolutionize. In the nineteenth century, women were the greatest obstacle to the emancipation of the workers: Flora Tristan, Louis Mitchell, how many timid housewives begged their husbands not to take the risk!Not only are they afraid of strikes, unemployment, and poverty, but they also worry that resistance might be wrong.It is conceivable that if they have to suffer, they would rather suffer familiar suffering than take risks, because they can still get some meager benefits by staying at home, but it is not so easy to get these on the road. The fate of women is closely bound up with the fate of frail things; their loss of these things is their loss of everything. Only the free subject can show itself to be beyond the continuity of time, and thus be able to check all decay; this supreme reliance has never been permitted to woman.She did not believe that the real cause of emancipation lay in the power of freedom which she had never tested; it seemed to her as if the world were governed by an obscure destiny against which it would be presumptuous.She herself had not devised the dangerous paths she was asked to pursue, so naturally she would not be enthusiastically involved.If the future can be opened to her, she will no longer cling to the past.Women are as bold and heroic as men when they are called to concrete action, when they see their own interest in what is designed for them. The many faults for which women are accused, such as mediocrity, laziness, frivolity, and slavishness, merely indicate the fact that their vision is blocked.Woman is said to be lewd, indulging in immanence; but above all she is always enclosed in it.Harem slaves showed no morbid enthusiasm for rose preserves and perfumed baths: they had to pass the time.When a woman is suffocated in the dreary boudoir (brothel or middle-class home), she is bound to retreat into tranquility; moreover, if she is eager for sexual pleasure, it is often because she is deprived of it.Because of unsatisfactory sex life, because of being destined to be roughly treated by men, because of "being accused of being a masculine ugly monster".She is in creamy juices and strong wines and velvets, and in water and sunshine.Find comfort in the touch of girlfriends and young lovers.If a man sees her as a very "carnal" person, it is because her situation makes her place a great deal of emphasis on her animal nature.Her physical requirements are not stronger than those of men, it's just that she magnifies the bits and pieces she catches.Sexual pleasure, like tearing pain, is a dizzying instant triumph; in a moment of violence the future and the world are denied; there is nothing but the fire of carnality; Stop feeling incomplete and frustrated.But she values ​​these inner victories only because interiority is her destiny. Her frivolity has the same cause as her "dirty materialism"; she thinks the little things are important because she has no access to the big things, and for her the little things that fill her daily life are often Of the most serious practical matters.She owed her charm, her chances, to her grooming, her beauty.She often appears lazy and listless; But the busyness that worked for her was as hollow as the passage of Nazi time.If she babbles and babbles, it is to pass the time when she has nothing to do: since action is impossible, she uses speech instead.In fact, when a woman is engaged in a career worth doing alone, she can show herself as active, efficient, and silent as a man— and ascetic. She was accused of slavishness; she was said to be ready to fall at her master's feet and kiss the hand that had struck her.She does lack real self-esteem in general. The advice given to cheated wives and jilted lovers in the "Advice to the Lovelorn" column is full of base subservience.The woman wears herself out in a haughty quarrel, only to pick up the crumbs the man deliberately throws at her.But what can a woman who sees a man both as her only means and as her sole reason for living do without the support of men?She must suffer every kind of humiliation; a slave cannot have human dignity; In the end, if woman is worldly, banal, and largely utilitarian, it is because she is forced to dedicate her existence to cooking and washing diapers—she cannot achieve a sense of the sublime!It is her duty to bear the monotonous repetition of life, in the reality of unconsciousness.Naturally, women have to repeat, to start again without innovation, and to feel that time seems to be turning around aimlessly.She's busy and never accomplishes anything, so she identifies with what she has.This attachment to things is the result of the attachment the man keeps her in, and it also explains her miserliness and greed.Her life has no purpose: her heart is devoted to procreation or to the care of things which are but a means, such as food, clothing, and shelter.These things are secondary mediators between animal life and free existence.The only value that has anything to do with secondary means is utility; it is on this level that the housewife lives, and she has no luxury of being more than useful to her family. But it is impossible for any living being to be content with a secondary role, since then the means would at once become the end (as we see, for example, in politicians), and the value of the means would become an absolute value.Then utility, above truth, beauty, and liberty, rules the mistress' paradise; and it is from this perspective that she looks to the whole world.It is precisely because of this that she adopted Aristotle's moderation, that is, the morality of mediocrity.How could one expect her to be bold, passionate, selfless and noble?These qualities can only emerge as a free man ventures through the open future, far beyond all established realities.Shut up in the kitchen or the boudoir, a woman is amazed at the narrowness of her field of vision. Her wings have been cut off, but people are sighing that she can't fly.Let the future open up to her so she won't be forced to linger in the present. The same inconsistency arises when people close her in the confines of her ego or domestic activities, but also because of her narcissism.Her selfishness, and the consequences they cause, add vanity, impulsiveness, malice, etc., to accuse her.She is deprived of all possibilities of concrete communication with other people; she cannot feel the attraction or experience the benefits of unity because she is completely devoted to her family and is in isolation. middle.It is almost impossible, then, to expect her to move beyond herself towards the general welfare.She clings to the realm she knows, where she can control objects and have an unreliable sovereignty over them. However, even with the doors and windows closed, a woman does not feel completely safe at home.Her home is surrounded by the world of men that she keeps at a respectful distance and does not dare to break into.It is precisely because she cannot grasp the world with technical skill, sound logic, and certain knowledge that she feels, like a child or a savage, surrounded by dangerous mysteries.She projected her magical conceptions of reality onto the male world; the course of events seemed inevitable to her, but anything could happen; Be ready to believe anything, whatever it is! She listened to rumors and created panic.She is anxious even when she is safe; her nights are haunted by realities consigned to nightmares; Haunted by the specter of war, revolution, famine, and poverty; unable to move, she is troubled.Her husband and son took risks in their careers or in the face of emergencies; their plans, the rules they followed, showed sure paths through darkness.But the woman struggles in confusion and darkness; she takes it for granted because she has done nothing; everything in her imagination is equally possible: a train can derail, an operation can go wrong, a business can fail.In her thoughts she tried to drive away the evil idea of ​​her own weakness. Her anxiety reveals her mistrust of the existing world.If it seemed dangerous, threatening to collapse at any moment, it was because she was unlucky to live in it.She's not resigned to her fate most of the time; she knows full well that everything she endures is against her will: she is, as such, a woman with nowhere to turn.She dared not resist rashly; Her submission was not voluntary; her attitude was one of resentment.Anyone who can command women's confidence (doctors, priests, social workers) knows that the tune they are used to singing is complaining.Among friends the woman repeats her troubles, and the women are all there like a chorus complaining about the injustice of fate, the world, and all men. The free individual blames only himself for his failures, for which he takes responsibility; but everything happens to woman through the agency of others, who are therefore responsible for her disasters.She was desperate and abandoned all remedies; it was useless to offer solutions to a complaining woman: she would accept nothing.As she does, she insists on living in her situation—that is, in a state of impotent rage.If some kind of change is proposed, she will wave her hand and say, "That's all or nothing!" An expedient measure.She holds the whole world responsible for creating it without her share and against her; she has protested against her position from girlhood and even childhood.She had been promised compensation, she had been assured that if she would let a man take control of her destiny, she would be rewarded a hundredfold—and now she felt cheated.She's going to sue the whole male world.Resentment is the opposite of attachment: When a person gives everything away, that person can never get enough in return. Yet woman also has to have a certain respect for the masculine world; if she is placed in an entirely opposite position, she feels that she is in danger of being homeless.So she adopted the idea of ​​good and evil—a sharp separation of good and evil, as her housewife experience suggested.An actor, like any other, is responsible for both good and evil, knowing that he has set goals and brings them to fruition; he realizes by action that all answers are ambiguous; Loss is all tangled together.But a passive person lacks this kind of action, and is unwilling even to raise ethical questions in his mind: the good should be realized, and if it cannot be realized, someone must have done something wrong, and those who did it should be punished.Like a child, a woman simply imagines good and evil as coexisting and separate existences; her theory of the opposite of good and evil relieves her of anxiety when making difficult choices and makes her feel at ease.To choose between evil and lesser evil, you have to decide for yourself what is failure and what is victory—all of which involves great risks.For this man who believed in the antithesis of good and evil, the line between good wheat and weeds was sharply drawn, and one could only get rid of weeds; dust itself was punishable, and clean meant not dirty at all; to make a house clean was to remove dirt and Rubbish. So a woman thinks, "It's all the Jews' fault," or it's all the Freemasons' fault, or it's all the Bolsheviks' fault, or it's all the government's fault; she's always against somebody or something.Among those who opposed Dreyfus, women were even more ruthless than men.They don't always know where the primordial evil might lie, but they expect "good government" to remove it the way they dust a house.To his passionate supporters, de Gaulle was the cleaning king; they thought he would scrub with a feather duster and a rag to make France "clean and beautiful." But these hopes are only for an uncertain future.Evil continued to erode good, and woman, unable to lay her hands on Jews, Masonics, and Bolsheviks, had to look around for someone who could be responsible, so that she could vent her righteous indignation concretely.The husband is her favorite victim to pick.He is the embodiment of the masculine world, which governs and deceives her through him.He takes the world for himself, and if something goes wrong, it's his fault.When he comes home at night, she complains to him about the baby.The shopkeeper, the cost of living, her rheumatism, the weather, wanted him to feel reprehensible too.She often harbored a special displeasure against him; but he was guilty first of all because he was a man.He may well be sick and have his own agenda ("That's another matter"), but he has privileges that she often feels injustice.It is remarkable that her hostility towards her husband or lover tends to attach her to him rather than alienate him.A man wants to leave his wife or mistress if he starts to hate her, but a woman wants the man she rooted to stay with her so that he can pay him.The retort is not to get rid of misfortune, but to indulge in it; the wife's greatest consolation is to pretend to be a martyr.Life and men have conquered her: she wants to turn defeat into victory.That's why she let herself cry and scream like she did when she was a child. Of course, a woman's tendency to cry is basically due to the fact that her life is built on the fact that she is powerless to resist; An education would also have given her no hesitation in self-indulgence.This influence of education or custom is indeed evident, for example, men like Benjamin Constant and Diderot used to burst into tears, and later men stopped crying because they felt that this practice was outdated.But most of all, since a woman has never sincerely accepted the world, she is always ready to adopt a frustrated attitude towards it.A man is indeed accepting the world, and even misfortune will not alter his attitude, he will face it squarely, will not allow himself to "surrender"; but it is almost effortless to make a woman think of the hostility of the world to her, of the hostility of fate to her. injustice.So she hastily retreated to her surest refuge: herself.What were the tear-stains on her cheeks, and the red eyes from crying, but the obvious expression of her grief-stricken soul?Tears were cool on her skin and slightly salty on her tongue.At the same time it was a soothing, though poignant, tenderness; her countenance shone under the gentle flow.Tears are both lamentation and consolation, both warm comfort and calm comfort.Tears are a woman's most effective excuse; they are like a sudden gale, like a typhoon, like April's hail, turning a woman into a fountain of mourning and a stormy sky.Her eyes see nothing, foggy; they lose sight, disappear into the rain; she loses sight, and returns to the passivity of natural objects.She was expected to be conquered, but she herself fell into the quagmire of failure; She sank like a rock, she was submerged, she stumped the man who was watching her, he was helpless, as in front of a waterfall.He didn't think the show was fair; she thought the fight was unfair from the start, because she never had another effective weapon in her hands.She wanted to resort to magic spells again.In fact, her crying angered the man, which gave her even more reason to cry. Whenever tears were not enough to show her resistance, she would lose her temper. This kind of offense has reached such a level that the man is even more ashamed.In some circles, a husband may actually punch his wife; in other factors, he is reluctant to resort to violence precisely because he is strong and his fists are effective weapons.But a woman indulges in symbolic outbursts just as much as a child: she can throw herself on a man, punch, kick, scratch and scratch, but it's just a gesture.Most importantly, however, she would use the pantomime of a nervous crisis to express a rebellion that she could not actually achieve.Her susceptibility to convulsions has other causes besides the physiological one: convulsions are an internal release of energy which, when directed outward into the environment, cannot act on any object; A release of the various negative forces caused.A mother seldom has a nervous crisis with her children because she can punish them, beat them; rather, because she has no real power, a woman gives in to outbursts when she is with her grown son, husband, or client.Madame Tolstoy's hysteria is intriguing; no doubt she errs greatly in not wanting to understand her husband, who, judging from her diaries, seems narrow-minded, insensitive, hypocritical, Far from being a likable character.But whether she's right or wrong doesn't change the dire situation she's in.She had done nothing all her life but in constant accusations, in the embrace of marriage, in the courage of maternal obligations, solitude, and the lifestyle her husband had imposed on her.Whenever Tolstoy's new orders intensified the conflict, she was helpless in the face of his hostility and could only oppose it with impotent will; Pretending to escape, pretending to be sick, etc., displeased those around her and exhausted herself.It is hard to see any other way out for her, since she has neither a positive reason to hide her rebellious feelings nor an effective way to express them. If a woman has reached the end of her rebellion, there is only one way out that remains open to her - and that is suicide.But it seems to be less common for women to act this way than it is for men.The significance of statistics in this regard is very ambiguous.Men who die by suicide are more common than women, but women who attempt to take their own lives are more common.This may be because women are likely to be content with acting: they often pretend to destroy themselves more than they really need to.This is also partly because the usual cruelty is repulsive, and women almost never use knifed and firearms to kill themselves.They are very likely to drown themselves, such as Ophelia, to show that women have a close relationship with water, as if in water, in the calm darkness, life can be passively disintegrated.In short, we have here again the ambiguity I have emphasized: the woman does not really want to give up what she dislikes.She pretended to disown, but ended up living with the man who caused her misfortune; she pretended to leave the life that caused her harm, but suicide was less common.She wasn't interested in definite solutions in the first place.她对男人、对生活、对她的处境表示抗议，但是没有成功地加以摆脱。 女性行为的许多方面都应当解释为抗议的形式。我们已经看到，女人欺骗她的丈夫常常是为了挑衅，而不是为了快活；她可能由于他是个有条不紊和精打细算的人，而故意粗心大意和浪费挥霍。讨厌女人的人指责女人总是迟到，认为她缺乏时间观念；但是就我们所见，实际上她能够把自己调适得完全符合时间要求。她迟到是有意安排的。有些卖弄风情的女人认为，她们这样刺激男人的欲望，可以让她们的出现得到更高的评价；但是在让男人等几分钟时，女人最想表明的是对那种长期等待（她的生活）的抗议。 在某种意义上，她的整个生存都在等待，因为她被束缚于内在性和偶然性的里比多之内，因为她对她生存正当性的证实掌握在别人的手中。她在等待男人的效忠和认可，她在等待爱情，她在等待丈夫或情人的感激与夸奖。她等待给她的支持，这种支持来自男人；不论她掌管支票簿，还是每周或每月只从丈夫那里领取一次零用钱，只要她想有钱付给杂货商或买件新衣服，丈夫就必须去领取工资或得到加薪。她在等待男人露面，因为她在经济上的依附性使她任他处理；她在男性生活中只是一个因素，而男人却是她的整个生存。丈夫在家外有他的职业，妻子不得不长期忍受他不在家的孤独；情人尽管可能很热情，可是还得由他根据他的义务来决定他们的会面和分手。在床上，她在等待男性的欲望，在等待（有时是焦急地等待）她自己的快感。 她唯一能够做的，就是在情人安排约会时姗姗来迟，就是不善于遵守丈夫指定的时间； 她以这种方式来维护她工作的重要性，来坚持她的独立性；她在那一会儿变成了主要的主体，别人要被动地服从她的意志。但这是些怯懦的报复尝试；不管她可能让男人等多久，她都永远无法补偿她在观察和期望中，在等待男性的美妙快感中所耗费的无限时间。 虽然女人承认男人有包罗万象的最高权力，崇拜他的偶像，但一般来说，她必然一步一步地争夺他的统治权。所以有名的“爱唱反调”，成了人们经常指责她的理由。她没有任何的独立范围，不可能以她自己的绝对真理和价值，去反对男性所维护并支持的真理和价值，她只能拒绝接受它们。她的否定究竟在多大程度是彻底的，取决于尊重和怨恨在她的本性中所占的比例。但实际上，她知道男性体系中的各种缺陷，因而会毫不犹豫地予以揭露。 女人从未把握过男人世界，因为她们的体验没有教会她们使用逻辑和技术；反之，男性装备在女性王国的边界上也失去了效力。在人类的体验中，有一整块地方被男性故意忽视了，因为他无法去思考它：这就是女人经历的体验。把图纸设计得十分精确的工程师，在家里像个小神：只要一句话，看呀，饭就给端上来了，衬衣就给浆好了，孩子就安静下来了；生育是一挥而就的行为，犹如摩西挥舞魔杖一般；他对这些奇迹没有任何惊讶之感。奇迹这个概念和魔力这个概念是有区别的：奇迹，在具有合理因果关系的世界中间，代表无原因事件的极端不连续性，在它面前，思想武器被碰得粉碎；而魔力现象则是由隐蔽力量统一起来的，这种力量的连续性可以为一个温柔的头脑所接受，却不可以为它所理解。刚出生的孩子，对父亲这个小神来说是一个奇迹，对经历了孩子在子宫里的发育期的母亲来说，却是一个魔力。 男人的体验是清晰的，但被空白中断；女人的体验在它自身的范围内，是神秘的、模糊的，但又是完整的。这种模糊使她感到沉重；在男性同她的关系中，他仿佛是轻松的，他有独裁者、将军、法官、官僚、法典和抽象原则那般轻松。当主妇耸耸肩膀说：“男人嘛，他们才不去想呢！”时，她这句话的含义是没有疑问的。女人也同样说：“男人嘛，他们才不懂呢，他们不了解生命。”女人把轻薄而碍事的雄蜂的象征，同有关祈祷螳螂的神话做了一番比较。 从这一角度来看，女人反对男性的逻辑是可以理解的。男性的推理不仅对她的体验是不适宜的，而且在他的手中变成了阴险力量的一种形式；男人所发表的无可争辩的意见是想给她造成混乱，其目的是让她处于两难境地：或者你同意，或者你不同意。 出于对整个公理体系的尊重，她应当同意；如果她不肯同意，就否决了这整个的体系。但她不可能贸然走得很远；她缺乏用另一种形式重构社会的手段。可是她又不能原封不动地接受它。她处于要反抗和受奴役的半途中，只好勉强服从男性的权威。他在每一个场合下，都要强迫她接受她半心半意屈服所造成的后果。男人追求这个人面兽身的女怪，追求这个半是奴隶半是自由人的伙伴：他在让她屈服于他的同时，还想强迫她信服一个论点，但她知道，他进行严密推理的前提是他本人已经选好了的。只要她避免对这些前提提出质疑，他就很容易让她哑口无言；尽管如此，他还是不能做到让她心悦诚服，因为她觉察到了他的独断专横。 于是他会恼羞成怒，指责她固不可彻，没有逻辑性；但是她不肯按照规矩去下赌注，因为她知道骰子已经给灌上铅了。 女人并非真的相信真理和男人所宣称的不一样；她宁肯认为根本就没有固定不变的真理。不仅仅是生命的变化性质才使她怀疑永恒的同一性原则，也不仅仅是宠罩着的魔力现象才破坏了因果关系观念。而是在男性世界本身的本质当中，在作为这个世界一员的她本身当中，她发现所有的原则、所有的价值、所有的存在物，其意义都是不明确的。她知道男性的道德观念一旦涉及到她就会变成大骗局。男人把贞操和正派行为的规范喊得震天价响，但私下里却邀请她去违犯这一规范，甚至在期待这样的违犯；如果没有这种规范，他借以藏身的富丽堂皇的牌坊就会倒塌。 男人很乐意把黑格尔的观点作为权威予以接受；根据这一观点，公民在使自身向普遍性超越的过程中，将获得道德上的尊严，但作为一个私人（aprivateintividual），他拥有实现欲望和快活的权利。既然如此，他同女人的关系就处在一个偶然性的范围里，道德观念不再适用，品行是一个无关宏旨的问题。他同其他男人的关系总是涉及到价值问题；在大家完全公认的法律下面，他在其他自由行动者面前也是一个自由行动者；但是和女人在一起时（她就是为了这个目的才被造出来的），他抛弃了生存责任，沉溺于他的en-soi［自在]的，或固定不变的、较低级的本性之中，将自己置于非真实性的层面上。这时他的表现是专制的、虐待狂的、强暴的，或者幼稚的、被虐狂的、爱发牢骚的；他试图满足他的魔念和忽发的奇想；他由于在公共生活中得到了权利，而“悠闲自在”，“无拘无束”。 他的妻子——和泰丽莎·德斯凯鲁斯一样，常常对他在公共场合的高调言行同“他私下不屈不挠搞的新花样”有天壤之别，感到不胜惊讶。他提倡高出生率，但是他又很在行，决不随便要孩子。他赞美贞洁忠实的妻子，但是他又勾引邻居的妻子，让她犯通奸罪。我们已经看到，当法国每年有100万妇女被男人置于要堕胎的境遇时，男人是何等虚伪地宣判堕胎是犯罪；往往是丈夫或情人要求这样解决；而且他们还常常心照不宣地假定，如果有必要，就动用这个法子。他们公开期望女人能自觉自愿地对罪行感到内疚：她的“不道德”，是被男人尊重的道德社会保持和谐所必需的。 这种口是心非的最臭名昭著的例子，就是男性对娼妓的态度，因为是他的需求造成了这种供应。我已经说过，妓女们是以何等厌恶和怀疑的态度，去看待这些道貌岸然的先生们的。 他们谴责一般的罪恶，却纵容自己的个人邪念；他们还认为，靠出卖肉体生活的女孩子是堕落的、放荡的，而利用她们的男性则不是。有一件轶事将有助于说明这种心理状态。在19．20世纪之交，警察在一个妓院发现了两个十二三岁的小女孩；在审讯取证时，这两个女孩子提到了她们的嫖客，他们是一些显赫人物，其中一个女孩子还要说出名字。法官立刻制止说： “不许你玷污一个体面男子的名字！”一个被授予勋级荣誉军团称号的绅士，在夺走小女孩的处女贞操时，仍是一个体面人；他有弱点，可弱点谁没有呢？而小女孩没有进入这个世界的道德王国的野心——她不是地方长官，也不是将军或伟大的法国人，她只不过是一个小女孩，她把她的道德价值圈在性的偶然性的王国里：她是堕落的、腐败的、邪恶的，只配送进感化院。 在许多情况下，只要不玷污他的崇高形象，男人在女人的默许下可以干些使她名誉扫地的坏事。她不完全懂得这些微妙之处；她只认识到男人并不按照他所宣布的那些原则行事，而且还要她违背这些原则；他口是心非，所以她也逢场作戏。她会是一个贞洁忠实的妻子——并会偷偷地屈服于他的欲望；她会是一个令人羡慕的母亲，但她也会小心地实行节育，如有必要就去堕胎。男人在正式场合反对她——这是此等游戏的规律，但背后却又感激她的“水性杨花”，感激她的不育。 女人扮演了那些要是让抓住就会被行刑队处决、要是成功就会腰缠万贯的间谍角色；她要承担男人的种种不道德：不但是妓女，而且所有的女人都被当做通往阳光明媚的、有良好卫生条件的、住着体面人的大厦下面的阴沟。所以，当有人向这些女人谈起尊严、荣誉、忠诚之类完全属于男性的崇高美德时，如果她们不想“谈下去”，这是不会令人惊讶的。有德性的男性指责她们自私、做戏、撒谎时，她们尤其报以辛辣的嘲笑。她们十分清楚，没有任何别的出路前她们开放。男人在涉及金钱和成功时也是“自私的”，但他在工作中有得到它们的手段。女人被分派担任的是寄生者角色——而每一个寄生者都是剥削者。为了获得人的尊严，为了吃饭和享受生活，为了生育，女人需要男性；正是通过性的服务，她才得到了这些利益； 由于受到这种功能的束缚，她完全变成了使用工具。 至于说谎，除非卖淫，在她和她的保护人之间不存在直言不讳的商业交易问题。男人甚至要求做戏：她希望成为他者；但一切生存者都是主体，都想根据自己的意愿克制自己。男人希望女人成为客体：她让自己变成了客体，她只是在这样做的那一刻才发挥了自由的主动性。这是她的最初背叛；连最温顺、最被动的人也仍然是一个有意识的人；有时，她在委身于他时，还在观察他、评价他，这种情况会让他感到受愚弄；她应当只是一个贡品，只是一个猎物。不过他还要求这个“物”是自愿把自己交给他的：在床上他要她感到快感；在家里她必须真心实意地承认他的优越地位和他的长处。于是她在服从时假装独立，虽然别的时候她也主动表演被动角色的喜剧。她撒谎是为了控制每天供给她面包的男人；吵架和流泪，心荡神移的爱，神经症的危险，这全是假的，所以她撒谎也是为了逃避她因自身利益而予以接受的专制。他鼓励她假装奉迎他的傲慢与虚荣；她反过来也用异化力量去反对他。这样她便报复了他，而这无疑是甜密的，因为她用欺骗他满足了她自己的欲望，享受到了嘲弄他的快乐。当妻子和高级妓女假装她们其实并没有感到的心荡神移时，她们在撒谎；后来和情人或女友在一起时，她们取笑受她们捉弄的人是何等地幼稚与虚伪。“他们不但把事情搞得一团糟，还期望我们精疲力竭以显示快感”，她们怨恨地说。 这种说法很像仆人们在自己呆的地方对主人说长道短时的说法。女人也有这样的毛病，因为她也是父权压迫的受害者；她也采取玩世不恭的态度，因为她彻头彻尾地观察了男人，就像贴身仆人似的。但是显然，女人的特性没有一种可以证明她的本质或意愿原本就是堕落的：它们是处境的反映。“强权之下，处处有异化，”傅立叶说，“禁令和走私是不可分的，在爱情当中和在贸易当中都是如此。”男人是如此清楚地知道女人的缺陷是她的处境的表现，以至他们急于保持两性等级制度，怂恿他们的伙伴只具备让他们蔑视的特性。无疑丈夫或情人会被和他一起生活的那个特定女人的缺陷所激怒，可是当他们赞美一般女性勉力时，又认为这种魅力同它的缺陷是不可分的。如果女人不是背信弃义的、轻浮的、怯懦的、懒惰的，她便失去了诱惑力。 在易卜生的《玩偶之家》中，海尔茂解释说，当一个男人宽恕一个脆弱女人的幼稚过错时，他是感到多么强大、公正、善解人意和宽宏大量啊。同样在伯恩斯坦的剧作中，丈夫们（作者和他们是通好气的）也是被偷偷摸摸的、心怀鬼胎的、与人私通的妻子感动得热泪盈眶；他们渴望俯视她，以鲜明表现自己的男性特长。如我们所见，美国的种族主义者和法国的殖民主义者也都希望黑人是偷偷摸摸的、懒惰的、撒谎的：这正好证明他一钱不值；这会把公正置于压迫者这一边；如果黑人坚持要做正派诚实的人，他就会被视为“坏演员”。这么一来，女人的缺陷，由于她并不想克服，相反要把它们变成一种装饰，而愈发被夸大了。 女人不接受逻辑原理，也不承认道德规范，对自然法则持怀疑态度，所以她对一般存在缺乏判断力：在她看来，世界仿佛是各种特殊情况的大杂烩。这可能是她宁肯相信邻居的闲言碎语，也不愿意相信科学解释的原因。无疑她是尊重印好了的书的，但这种尊重却表现为她看书时走马观花，不能领略书中的含义；另一方面，她在排队或在车厢上所听到的某个素不相识的人讲的奇闻轶事，却立刻具有压倒性的权威。在她的范围内一切都是有魔力的；在此之外，一切也都是神秘的。她不熟悉判断是非的标准；只有直接的经验——她自己的经验，或经过再三强调的别人的经验，才是令人信服的。至于她自己的自我，她觉得她是一个特殊的情况，因为她被隔绝在家中，不能主动接触其他女人；她总是期望命运和男人能给她带来额外的利益。她非常相信她的直觉，而不是相信普遍有效的推理；她很愿意认为这种直觉来自于上帝，或来自于某种模糊的世界精神；对于某种不幸或意外，她冷静地想道：“我是不会发生这种事的。”相反，对于利益，她却认为“我是个例外”，所以宁可说她在期待得到额外的利益。售货员会在价钱上给她打折扣，警察会让她没有通行证也可以通过；她学会了过高估计自己微笑的价值，而且从未有人告诉过她所有的女人都会微笑。并不是她认为自己比邻居特别：她不做这种比较。基于同样理由，经验极少向她证明她是怎么错的：她一次又一次地失败，但从未从中得出有效的结论。 这也指出了女人未能建成一个稳固的、可以向男性挑战的相反的世界的原因；她们时常抱怨普通的男人，她们讲述卧室里或分娩时发生的事情，她们交换算命天宫图和美容秘方。 但她们又缺乏建设这个可供她们发泄怨恨的世界所必需的坚定信念；她们对男人的态度极为矛盾。无疑他是一个孩子、一个单薄而脆弱的躯体，他是一个笨蛋、一个讨厌的雄蜂、一个卑鄙的暴君、一个爱虚荣的自私之徒；但他也是一个解放她们的英雄，一个赋予她们以价值的神。他的欲望是粗鄙的欲望，他的拥抱是可耻的义务；不过他那烈火一般的热情和男性力量，又仿佛是开天辟地的力量。当女人欣喜若狂地说“他真是个男子汉”时，她立刻唤起了她所赞美的那个男人的性活力和社会影响力。在性和社会这两个领域中，他都显示了优越的创造力；她不能想像他是一个大艺术家、大商人、将军、领袖，而又不是一个性能力很强的情人，所以他的社会成功，一向有着性的吸引力；反之，她很快就会认为那个满足她欲望的男人是个天才。