If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
But women do not say 'We', except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say 'women', and women use the same word in referring to themselves.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the distinction in how men and women refer to each other, reflecting on identity and social constructs.
Simone De Beauvoir emphasizes that women often do not unite under a collective identity like 'we' in casual discourse, unlike men who can refer to 'women' as a distinct group. This observation sheds light on the societal structures that influence gender discussions and the language we use, pointing out how language can reflect deeper social dynamics and individual identity.
Themes
GenderIdentityLanguageSocietyFeminism
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on women's empowerment, this quote can illustrate the importance of language in shaping identity.
More from Simone De Beauvoir
All quotes βTwo separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)
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Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.
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As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.
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Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present β¦ Eating, sleeping, cleaning β the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, grey and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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