"Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female - whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male"
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De Beauvoir’s line works like a legal brief disguised as a slap: it exposes how supposedly neutral definitions smuggle in a hierarchy. “Man” gets to mean the human default, the unmarked category, while “woman” is filed under biology, a specialty case. The sting lands in the second clause, where competence becomes a kind of gender trespass. When a woman speaks with authority, seeks independence, pursues intellect or ambition, she isn’t recognized as fully human on her own terms; she’s accused of borrowing masculinity, as if agency were proprietary.
The intent is surgical. De Beauvoir isn’t merely complaining about prejudice; she’s naming a structural trick of language and culture: the male is treated as the universal measure, and the female as deviation. That’s the subtext behind “imitate the male” - a culture so committed to male normativity that it can’t interpret women’s autonomy as authentic. It must be mimicry, performance, counterfeit.
Context matters: in mid-20th-century France, de Beauvoir is writing into a world where “rights” and “reason” are proclaimed in grand, humanist terms while women are still fenced off by law, custom, and expectation. The famous argument of The Second Sex - woman as “the Other” - is condensed here into one bitter observation about categories. It’s not a call for women to become men; it’s an indictment of a civilization that keeps confusing “human” with “male,” then congratulates itself for being objective.
The intent is surgical. De Beauvoir isn’t merely complaining about prejudice; she’s naming a structural trick of language and culture: the male is treated as the universal measure, and the female as deviation. That’s the subtext behind “imitate the male” - a culture so committed to male normativity that it can’t interpret women’s autonomy as authentic. It must be mimicry, performance, counterfeit.
Context matters: in mid-20th-century France, de Beauvoir is writing into a world where “rights” and “reason” are proclaimed in grand, humanist terms while women are still fenced off by law, custom, and expectation. The famous argument of The Second Sex - woman as “the Other” - is condensed here into one bitter observation about categories. It’s not a call for women to become men; it’s an indictment of a civilization that keeps confusing “human” with “male,” then congratulates itself for being objective.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949). |
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