"This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate"
About this Quote
A single sentence, and de Beauvoir turns “that’s just how it is” into an accusation. The first clause lands like a grim proverb: “always,” “a man’s world” - not a temporary injustice but an inherited arrangement dressed up as nature. Then she pivots, and the blade is in the word “adequate.” She’s not merely rejecting patriarchy; she’s rejecting the intellectual alibis that keep it polite.
The intent is surgical: to strip legitimacy from the explanations society recites to justify male dominance - biology, tradition, religion, “rational” differences, the supposed fragility or domestic destiny of women. By calling those reasons inadequate, she implies they are not neutral arguments but post-hoc rationalizations, stories built to make an old power structure feel inevitable. The subtext is that patriarchy doesn’t persist because it makes sense; it persists because it is enforced, internalized, and rewarded.
Context matters. Writing in the mid-20th century, de Beauvoir is speaking from the philosophical ecosystem of existentialism, where “essence” is not destiny but a social script. The line previews the larger thesis of The Second Sex: woman is made into “the Other,” defined relationally against the male norm. That’s why the sentence works rhetorically: it refuses to debate on patriarchy’s preferred terrain (minor reforms, nicer attitudes) and instead attacks the premise that domination requires a good explanation at all.
It’s cool, controlled prose with moral heat underneath - the sound of a thinker refusing to let injustice hide behind theory.
The intent is surgical: to strip legitimacy from the explanations society recites to justify male dominance - biology, tradition, religion, “rational” differences, the supposed fragility or domestic destiny of women. By calling those reasons inadequate, she implies they are not neutral arguments but post-hoc rationalizations, stories built to make an old power structure feel inevitable. The subtext is that patriarchy doesn’t persist because it makes sense; it persists because it is enforced, internalized, and rewarded.
Context matters. Writing in the mid-20th century, de Beauvoir is speaking from the philosophical ecosystem of existentialism, where “essence” is not destiny but a social script. The line previews the larger thesis of The Second Sex: woman is made into “the Other,” defined relationally against the male norm. That’s why the sentence works rhetorically: it refuses to debate on patriarchy’s preferred terrain (minor reforms, nicer attitudes) and instead attacks the premise that domination requires a good explanation at all.
It’s cool, controlled prose with moral heat underneath - the sound of a thinker refusing to let injustice hide behind theory.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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