Defining Community for Beauvoir

A problem facing Beauvoir, and most authors who write on the subject of gender and sex, is how do you define a gender or sex? Of course there are many ways to define gender ranging from the biology of the person, to the outwards appearance of the person, to the preference of the person. However, in reading Beauvoir’s Second Sex, a new way to define gender was brought to my mind. Through analyzing how “Jews” and “Negroes “ are identified some light can be shed on how to define a community and then expand this understanding of community to being a woman. Granted there are many definitions to what makes a “woman” and I am not trying to state the one described below is in any way better than any other definition; however, I would like to make the argument that this definition is at least equally valid, and in some cases could serve as more useful. 

What makes someone a member of the Jewish community? I know many people, myself included, who don’t consider them religiously Jewish but still consider themselves part of the Jewish community, as I always tell people, “I’m ethnically Jewish, not religiously Jewish.” Likewise, just memorizing prayers and going through a conversion ceremony might make someone religiously Jewish, but not fully part of the Jewish community. So what makes someone part of the Jewish community? There are several factors at play here but the biggest two are self-recognition and a shared understanding of past experiences. I identify with the Jewish community not for any religious reasons but because I understand the past experiences of the Jewish people, I have seen the effects of these experiences, which last even until today, and I have let these experiences shape me. In order to be part of a community one must understand the past experiences of said community. That doesn’t mean just knowing dates in a history book, this person must understand it on a deeper level, to the point where the experiences of this community aren’t just a story they know from history class but is a story that stirs genuine emotion within them. It is only once a person truly understands a community’s past and decides to be identified with them, does he become part of that community. And at the same time, this defines the community: groups of people who identify together and who have a shared understanding of past experiences. 

Benedict Anderson, famous for his ideas on Imagined Communities, wrote “ Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.” Someone becomes part of the Jewish community not simply through a conversion ceremony, someone becomes part of the Jewish community through their imagination; imaging themselves as part of the community and imagining themselves as a product to some extent of the past experiences of the other members of the community. When many people subscribe to these notions, a community is constructed.

This concept is applicable to African-Americans as well. Being part of the African-American community is more than having dark skin or ancestors from Africa, it requires self-recognition and an understanding of the past. I personally know people who are, according to lineage, African-American. However, they do not consider themselves as African-American, and rather identify as African or identify as American and I feel they are completely justified in this decision and are true members of their respective communities. If someone feels their understanding of past experiences is more inline with those of an American and not that of an African-American, they can identify with the American community, likewise if they feel their understanding of past experiences, and how it has effected their personal growth, is more similar to someone who is purely African, they can identify with the African community. Likewise, I believe that someone who is not African-American can identify, and truly be considered, part of the African-American community without being, according to lineage, African-American. Say someone with dark skin from Jamaica moved to the US at a young age and while there experienced a life typical of an African-American. They learned about the history of America in school, and the history of blacks in America, they learned about slavery, segregation, and also they felt the lasting effects of these institutions in their daily lives. Now they are not technically African-American, but their understanding of past experiences, and their own experiences too, has paralleled that of more African-Americans than Jamaicans, should they have less of a right to identify with and be a part of the African-American community than someone who is African-American by lineage but lived their entire life in another country and never really understood the African-American experience? I believe the answer is no. Being a member of a community is primarily about similar understandings of past experiences. 

Now the same is true for a woman and the woman community. An appropriate way to define this community is through past experiences. If someone identifies as a woman and truly understands the experiences of women, then they are part of that community. I would like to reiterate here that understanding the past experiences of women doesn’t mean reading about it in a textbook, it means feeling a true connection to those past experience in a way that has shaped the person’s personal development. Being a woman, by this definition, is independent of the biology, it is independent of dress, it is independent of other people ideas on your gender, it is, however, dependent on considering yourself a woman and truly understanding the past experiences of other people in the woman community and allowing those experiences to at least partially shape you. 

Recently Caitlyn Jenner was award Glamour’s “Woman of the year award” and there was a widely publicized reaction from Rose McGowan on this decision. Mrs. McGowan’s reaction reflects many of the ideas here on what it means to be part of a community and, more specifically to be a woman. “Caitlyn Jenner you do not understand what being a woman is about at all. You want to be a woman and stand with us —well learn us. We are more than deciding what to wear. We are more than the stereotypes foisted upon us by people like you. You’re a woman now? Well fucking learn that we have had a VERY different experience than your life of male privilege. Woman of the year? No, not until you wake up and join the fight. Being a woman comes with a lot of baggage. The weight of unequal history. You’d do well to learn it."

Based on the ideas of Mrs. McGowan and bits of what I’ve seen of Caitlyn Jenner, it seems she has yet to enter into the community of women. Yes, she recognizes herself as a woman, but that’s just part of it. She must also have her life impacted and her person further developed by the past experiences of woman, and it seems that this is not yet the case. Recently Mrs. Jenner stated, “The Hardest part about being a woman is figuring out what to wear.” Once Mrs. Jenner further understands what it has meant to be a woman throughout history, than will she become closer to becoming a woman by the definition provided in this post. 

Using ideas from Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and by drawing on the similarities between Women, Jews, and African American, we’re able to gain insight into a new way to define a community and specifically the woman community. Defining a member of this community as some one who both considers themselves a member of the community and has a true understanding of the past experiences of other members of this community. There are many different ways to define who is a woman, and for different situations different definitions suffice, but this definition is equal valid to any that exist and will find situations where it is particularly effective. 

Simone de Beauvoir’s unintentional guide to the teenage struggle

Though it often feels that I have been on this Earth for a long time, I am ever-aware that my young years are trailing not far behind me; a time when I am certain most everyone felt themselves coming into their own, yet not having full control over their lives. There was always a dichotomy between what you wanted to be and what your parents wanted you to be, what your teachers demanded, or any other expectation which you unfortunately might not have fulfilled. 

As I read Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Ethics of Ambiguity”, I found much of it resonated with me. There were, of course, many parallels to Sartre’s writings, but I did find Beauvoir’s delivery added something new and convincing which may shed some light on the teenage struggle. 

This struggle between being what others want you to be and being what you are is exactly this notion of “ambiguity” Simone de Beauvoir was referring to. Beauvoir calls for the need for one to recognize one’s own ambiguity and thus realize one’s own ability and duty to act. Because there is no God responsible for our actions, and we have the freedom to act, we must recognize the freedom that we are and our corresponding responsibility. Beauvoir also addresses how the gaze of “the other” can be detrimental to one’s freedom. The look of the other is a form of oppression, for it forces one to change their actions accordingly and turn one into what they are not. 

  When applied to the adolescent period of life, Beauvoir can be said to set forth a very important life lesson: To recognize one’s freedom and subsequent responsibility to act independently from the gaze of the other. Basically, do what is right for you, regardless of anyone else’s expectations or desires. As humans we have this freedom that we must use in accordance with ourselves, and once we recognize this state of constant “ambiguity”, we will be able to be true to our condition and whatever passion we choose to pursue. 

Existentialism Reloaded

So human kind is condemned to be free, according to Sartre. I hope people in this world would use this condemnation to read something other than their phones, oh God how I greave the piece of paper. From all the choices available for one to aim towards a goal by a series of little choices that accumulate and drive one closer and closer and closer to certain accomplishment, disregarding how much far away it may lay on the horizon of goals, people often forget the nature of the freedom from which we suffer. Human freedom, in contrast with the rest of the animals in the creation, is not a ball of snow, is not a continuum. This I argue, by appealing to the "philosophe" Henri Bergson (who I know only because of the fact that he is the one I’m doing my project on.) As humans suffer from being able to reflect and wonder in the land of abstraction, their decision making malfunction is not confined to the space-time context in which our existence and a snowball do lay. Our thoughts do not materialize themselves as we just think about them; they also do not take into account the rushed running forward of time. Our thoughts are always new, even if there is this huge amount of conscious and subconscious information behind them, that may even be the reason, gathered as a sum, for this new though that may even be a reflection on a "wow why do I just keep on thinking about this" subject, as for these, our thoughts always taste and present their selves in a different and surprisingly old but refreshed perspective.

No matter how close one may feel to the ultimate goal that drives actions through the inescapable attachment to freedom, every decision is a wide open door, once again, to the whole moral spectrum, with vectors of all magnitudes pointing in all directions.

However, from a perfectly "feet rooted to earth" point of view, choosing the vector that cancels and resets our snowball to zero so that we may actually experience the freedom we all potentially hold within, in its ultimate expression, is a really scary decision and also gives the impression of being unrealistic, when thinking about how we are also condemned to take responsibility for our actions and to take care of the debts we may have acquired in the way down into the present as we struggled with the dizziness produced by the "wooow s***, I can actually do whatever I want." It seems logically impossible to enjoy from a completely fresh start. On the other hand, our story and the moving forward of its development, appears to be the only thing we actually have, and even wondering about the fact of getting anywhere near the "F5" button gives us the chills. However, it is not impossible, it is not unrealistic, and it is not scary, at least no more frightening than a screen picture in which all of these unhandled snowballs combined, after the sudden death of most of the self-sufficient "we will be able to stop those just in time" characters, goes down the hill to burry once and for all the "still asleep" dreams of ultimate freedom the town people didn't yet know they had.

Because God gave his only begotten Son so that everyone who believes in him won’t get lost but would get saved. And it is completely true that we actually are free because in first letter of Timothy chapter 2 verses 1-6 it is written that God would love for everyone to get saved through faith in the sacrifice of his Son Jesus, who is actually God himself, who took all the anger He had feel, felt, and will feel towards sin and spill it all upon his hundred percent human existence, taking responsibility for having made us the way He did, despising sin and loving sinners at the same time, through the same action. However there are various passages that declare that not everyone will actually be saved as in Hebrews 9:28.

So enjoy your freedom and make the best out of it.

As a woman 

Now, woman has always been, if not man’s slave, at least his vassal; the two sexes have never divided the world up equally; and still today, even though her condition is changing, woman is heavily handicapped.” The Second Sex, Simon de Beauvoir

After reading some excerpts of The Second Sex of Simone de Beauvoir, I felt some kind of injustice and bitterness because of being a woman. Thoughts like, it is unfair that woman´s life is more painful, demanding or difficult, came to my mind. They were words that I have heard many times, but I had never felt really. Then, I started to think and to look for a kind of relief or comfort that could stop the frustration I was feeling in that moment. After that, one question came to my mind. If I had a second life and I had the possibility to choose between being a woman or a man, what would I choose? Completely sure I said to myself, I would choose being a woman. Then, why I am feeling frustrated of being a woman? And the answer for me was because I have read these excerpts and maybe the author convinced me a little bit of the idea that being a woman is a problem. But does it mean that I believe that? NO! 

Simone de Beauvoir tries to find the reasons behind the question of why the world have been dominated by men. She analyzes different factors that may explain the submission ofwomen. She concludes that the woman is subject to man for historical and cultural reasons, because there are no biological or psychological differences that justify the different treatment. Although  I do not agree with her reasoning for several reasons, I want to discuss and analyze the basis of all this discussion: the inferiority of women.

Probably, if I ask those who think that women are inferior, nobody will answer yes, or at least I hope so. However, many women complain that they feel inferior because the world treats them as such. "Women face severe disadvantages," says the author. Are thesedisadvantages real or is instead a perception of which we have convinced?

If the disadvantages are real, then it becomes necessary to think which actually those disadvantages are. Definitely a first example appears around the workplace. Many women have to accept lower wages or higher difficulty accessing to certain positions (related to political or business management for example) just because they are women. Under this argument, then it should be a disadvantage for men to be men if they want to work in child care or something related to it for example. Do men face greater difficulties than women to enter this market? The answer is yes. However, men do not feel inferior or discriminated by this situation, but women do feel discriminated or with less freedom when they face with such situations. Why does the difference in the perception exist? It's an interesting question, but it is not my purpose to respond it now. However, I think the answer is related to the value that society (and the market) gives to the different types of jobs that each sex finds it difficult to access.

Under my perspective, the fact that women face disadvantages is subjective and depends on who and from what point is analyzed. All people face certain disadvantages in certain partsbecause of our personal characteristics, but we also have other advantages in other parts. The belief that the female sex is the second or lower sex for me is a belief that has no justification in reality, but rather, is based on the perceived unfairness of some women. Although the story has great guilt in the formation of this perception, I think we should judge the situation from the present and according to today's reality.

Men and women are different, and as such we are treated different. We are neither better nor worse, neither superior nor inferior, just different. Neither men nor women can be replaced by the opposite sex, because there is something in its essence that makes everyone better for certain things. We all have different qualities, are more adept at some things and less for others, so is the life. I see in the feminist discourse a kind of self-conviction that the world is pressing them or it is taking away their freedom. I think, many times this  self-conviction limit women and makes them become trapped in feelings of helplessness and injustice, instead of persist in the pursue of their ideals

Certainly, in the past, the women's were treated differently. They had fewer rights and they were seen as inferior, but this has changed today. Even there is some way to advance but I think we should change the focus and not see the issue as a struggle for domination of one sex or another. The world is made by men and women, and men and women are needed to the progress of our world. Men and women have much to contribute, it is up to everyone to discover where she or he can leave his mark. Why are we going to compete if there is room for everyone? Why are we going to invent a fight where there is no reason to start it? 

I am a woman and I'm proud of it. If I had the choice between being a man and woman, I would choose to be a woman without hesitation. And the reason behind my choice is being a woman gives me the greatest privilege of which a man will always be private: motherhood. Parenthood is something shared by men and women. However, motherhood is something that can only do women. We have the choice to exercise motherhood or not, we are free to choose. Men on the other hand, they can never choose to take their child choose in their womb.

Meursault and Sisyphus

Meursault and Sisyphus

(A Movie Still for DETACHMENT)

Whoever once read the book L'ÉTRANGER of Camus in his/her adolescence, I assume nobody couldn’t be fanatical about the detachment of Meursault. I still can’t let go this character out of my affection, and still L'ÉTRANGER is one of my favorite book. Thinking of “Nothing else Matters” easily captivate us. This a much misunderstood idea, so called ‘nihilism’, can readily misled us if we are eager to justify this. Even the matter like ‘Social Contract’ by Rousseau seems so minor and unimportant within this awareness of reality. Meursault who represents this attractive way of thinking, ends up...... (I don’t want to spoil the plot for somebody who haven’t read «The Stranger» yet.) However, unlike Meursault, Camus lived his life in a fierce and intense endeavor trying to make some sense of meaningless which obviously seems quite paradoxical. He won the Novel Prize, distinctly had made great achievements throughout the history of literature, and he even engaged himself in the resistance movement during the Second World War. Of course, he never neglected his physical pleasure as well.

(Camus, Google Image)

How come the life of author, who had the main theme of absurd and meaningless, can fully productive and glowing like tightly pressed sandwich? It seems certain that Camus wrote «The Stranger» to disclose some certain absurdity of our life. To explain his novel there needs to look through his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. Against this absurd fate, Sisyphus keeps repetitive rebellion which seems even certain ‘sublimity’. The deed of Sisyphus which is the pronoun of meaningless life is painful, but not just meaningless. It is clearly harsh because the deed does not produce any value in the face of its inexhaustible agony, which has great resemblance to most of the life of human beings according to Meursault. As a famous mention by Nietzsche, what have been dominated the human race is the coincidence as empty nothingness. However, the life of Sisyphus not only doesn’t have the meaning of life, but also there is no purpose. Here, too, there is few or no inherent purpose in most of human activities which daily encountered. Of course, there is a possibility of having certain intervenient purpose which has no relation to my own will; however, is there any existing creature with only one’s own action and free will? Übermensch?

(Sisyphus, Google Image)

Camus made mention of this absurd repetition as: “This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.” Methods to be rid of this punishment, people might usually come up whit these three: 1) Suicide 2) Religious hope 3) Rebellion. Suicide is the elimination of the existing human part, religious hope is the elimination of the existing world part. However, as Camus, both cannot be an answer because of its biased renunciation. Only way to deal with these two insulated world is staring the very things and fight against those: “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” This fact seems incendiary at a glance, however, in some sense deeper, this drives thee irritate. The only way to overcome the unbearable absurd is barely the ‘withstanding’ in this ‘absurd freedom’.

The lucidity that was to constitute his torture
at the same time crowns his victory.
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
 -
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Camus insists that the life of no meaning is better that the like of the obsession of meaning. We hope our life has some meaning. And when the elimination of GOD had made, there are some few do tries to get a grip of some meaning of life with radical and resolute choices. The reason is that the weakness of human being wishes it would have certain tiny and tenuous wave when it comes to death, at least, because of the meaningless of existence. However, the fact is that human being is apparently a small and unimportant dust, for a little while imagining but to the infinite universe. Merely in one’s own sight, the very shine dust brightly. This absurd deserves (actually, more than) the metaphor of Sisyphus. With all the strength Sisyphus “rolling a rock up to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight.” We know that the rock will fall back, however, ‘ceaselessly’, we keeps repeating the act in our own life or entire history while existing on the time. Really? Why do we have to? Let’s return and look again Meursault.

(An interesting adaptation of Camus’ L'ÉTRANGER)

There seem to dwell two different Meursault in the literature. Meursault himself is a L'Étranger; however, at the same time, inside himself too, two different Meursault each other L'Étranger. There are no reason to expect any reason in the behavior of Meursault, and his numbness inflame the base sense of reader most painfully. The ‘heterogeneity’ which Meursault refuses, somehow build certain meaning within the crack of meaningless. The meaningless attain the most significance only because it refuses the constructed world? Is the rebuff of repetition such as Sisyphus’, the deeds of becoming the ownmost oneself or hollow L'Étranger as nothingness? What if there is no GOD when Sisyphus has to fulfill its own punishment? What if the existence of GOD(or DEATH of god) is the justification about one’s own guilt or ‘significant meaningless’? It doesn’t seem like things could get worse, when Sisyphus abandon his burden and shoot the crow. If there is no god, nothing will happen. If there is god, he will punish him again with maybe rolling two rocks up? Worst destiny is actually not the worst destiny, as a matter of fact, it is perhaps the fate of implying every possibility.

The absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to.
-
 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

(Meursault, Illustrate)

Moi commun

Inequality emerged during the process of civilization, with the development of production and of the economy at large and therefore with the institution of private property. Inequality doesn’t belong to the “natural” man, that of the state of nature, but to the “historical” man. In the state of nature inequality is nearly inexistent, but it strengthens in the development of our capacities and of our being, until it becomes legitimate, so to speak, with the introduction of private property, which is contrary to natural right. It is only in the initial state of nature that there is equality and isolation, because natural law leads us to conservation without damaging others, driven by amour de soi and pitié.

Hence the necessity to stipulate a social contract. The necessity to create a new man and a new society, benefiting of the fact that time and civilization have improved man’s intellectual capacities. Rousseau wants to demonstrate this possibility, but emphasizing the importance of making this society free. To make the society free, he must mediate between preserving man’s freedom and a well-ordered society which entails some obligations and therefore some renunciations. The only way to create a situation in which we are free in a collectivity is to be members of a sovereign, to alienate ourselves to the whole community we are part of.

“The alienation being without reserve, the union is as perfect as it can be, and no associate has anything more to demand.”

Therefore, the only solution is the total alienation of each individual, which entails a guarantee of reciprocity vis-à-vis the respect and compliance with the contract. This will solve the condition of inequality: man is free because of full and complete equality and because of participation. Not the alienation of one’s individual liberty to others, since Rousseau doesn’t accept the idea of divine right, and doing so would entail some sort of slavery.

The general will is at the basis of this alienation. The general will is the will of the citoyen to take part in the collective legislative decision, to participate in the the common body of the contract, the moi commun, the public good.

“Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.”

“At once, in place of the individual personality of each contracting party, this act of association creates a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly contains votes, and receiving from this act its unity, its common identity, its life and its will." (The Social Contract)

However, can this model he proposes be possible? How could it work if our individual interests have priority over the common good? It’s quite hard to imagine a society in which citizens surrender to the general will and give up their individual personality to the common body.

Rousseau believes that man isn’t only egotism, instinct and passions, but also reason and conscience and so he is able to look beyond his self-interest and take into account common values and listen to the general will, which is the voice community’s voice. Being the community’s voice, it is also his own voice, since it’s the moi commun that guarantees individual rights and liberties. This means that by obeying to the general will we obey ourselves and this is liberty itself: we are really free only when we are citoyens. Going against the law, the sovereign and the society would mean going against ourselves, because we are all the above.

Rousseau believes that with a “new man” this is possible and education has a key role in the creation of a new man.