Beauvoir on Women's Complicity in Their Own Unfreedom

Abstract

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir argues that women are often complicit in reinforcing their own unfreedom. But why women become complicit remains an open question. The aim of this article is to offer a systematic analysis of complicity by focusing on the Heideggerian strands of Beauvoir's account. I begin by evaluating Susan James's interpretation of complicity qua republican freedom, which emphasizes the dependent situation of women as the primary cause of their complicity. I argue that James's analysis is compelling as far as it goes, but that it implies complicity is the inevitable outcome of women's current existence and fails to adequately account for Beauvoir's claim that women actively embrace their own unfreedom. I then draw out the Heideggerian strands of Beauvoir's analysis, demonstrating how this enables us to systematize Beauvoir's account of women's oppressive situation with her claims regarding the active role women can play in reinforcing their own unfreedom. I argue that this approach preserves the strengths of the republican interpretation, but provides a better account of cases where complicity may not be inevitable and yet some women still act to reinforce rather than resist their own unfreedom.

Becoming a “Vulnerable Senior” in the Days of COVID-19

“…The notion of situation as used by Beauvoir describes the particular way in which we are opened onto the world. It "encompasses both the objective and subjective aspects of experience" (Moi 1999, 68;Knowles 2019). 7 Unrealizables, however, are not part of a person's situation.…”

Beyond adaptive preferences: Rethinking women's complicity in their own subordination

“…Although the FCP may have been born with the ‘lad culture’ of the early 2000s, we can see her legacy in the idea of ‘erotic capital’ (Hakim, 2010), and in the mainstreaming of raunch culture as a purported site of female ‘empowerment’ (Freeman, 2016). The FCP lives on in the complex testimonies of young women who feel ‘obliged to turn themselves into toys for boys’ at the same time as maintaining that ‘the world is a place in which your gender no longer stands in the way of your success’ (Bauer, 2015, p. 44), and in the backlash against the #MeToo movement, where women have, for example, defended sexual harassment as a necessary part of courtship (Knowles, 2019, pp. 243, 257).…”

“…16 16 Beauvoir is perhaps the exception here, as she uses the phrase ‘complicity’ to describe the relationship between women and men under patriarchy Beauvoir, ([1949] 2011, p. 757). However, as I have argued elsewhere (Knowles, 2019), it is only when we bring the Heideggerian lens from Being and Time to bear on The Second Sex that the phenomenological explanation of complicity fully comes into view. …”

“…I discuss this further in Section 4.1.14 For an extended discussion of the way how false consciousness fails to explain women's engagement in raunch culture, see MeloLopes (2018Lopes ( , pp.2526Lopes ( -2528.15 This marks the case as distinct from Cudd's Larry and Lisa example, which concerns the rational division of domestic labour under conditions of gender injustice(Cudd, 1994, p. 37).16 Beauvoir is perhaps the exception here, as she uses the phrase 'complicity' to describe the relationship between women and men under patriarchyBeauvoir, ([1949] 2011, p. 757). However, as I have argued elsewhere(Knowles, 2019), it is only when we bring the Heideggerian lens from Being and Time to bear on The Second Sex that the phenomenological explanation of complicity fully comes into view. 17 This is the definition of subordination offered in Section 2.18 This is not to deny the importance of figures such as Husserl and Kierkegaard, who had an important influence on the development of Heidegger's thought.19 Sartre's indebtedness to Heidegger is perhaps the most obvious, as indicated by the title of Being and Nothingness, but as has been argued, it is also important to recognise Arendt's intellectual debt to Heidegger(Bernasconi, 2002) and Beauvoir's(Bauer, 2006;Gothlin, 2003;Knowles, 2019).20 This does not mean that the phenomenologist assumes that agents necessarily tend towards complicity, as I explain inSection 4.2.…”

“…19 19 Sartre's indebtedness to Heidegger is perhaps the most obvious, as indicated by the title of Being and Nothingness , but as has been argued, it is also important to recognise Arendt's intellectual debt to Heidegger (Bernasconi, 2002) and Beauvoir's (Bauer, 2006; Gothlin, 2003; Knowles, 2019). …”