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Essay: Uncovering Bad Faith and the Oppression of Women: Discussing Simone De Beauvoir’s Battle of the Sexes

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  • Published: 1 April 2019*
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Revolutionary and thought-provoking, Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is a novel that challenged the subordination of women brought upon by men and illustrated a feminist and philosophical perspective on rights of women. Working alongside with Jean-Paul Sartre, De Beauvoir’s work in The Second Sex underlies Sartre’s concept of bad faith in relation to De Beauvoir’s concept of the “battle of the sexes.” Being confined by her own immanence in a male-dominated society, De Beauvoir illustrates that the feminine subject “declares herself as their equal” in relation to the transcendence of the male for the struggle for recognition because it is affecting her free will and responsibility (De Beauvoir 428). By recognizing the female, the male attempts to “find himself” as a stable identity to transcend as the male figure through “the devaluation of femininity” and the oppression of women. Lastly, De Beauvoir believes that the construct of femininity is itself a product, as Sartre puts it, of bad faith because “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (De Beauvoir).

Conceived by Jean-Paul Sartre, the concept of bad faith underlies Simone De Beauvoir’s concept of the so-called “battle of the sexes.” In order to explain how the concept of bad faith relates to the concept of the battle of the sexes, one has to understand Sartrean philosophy. According to Sartre, bad faith is an act of deceiving oneself by rejecting the notion of freedom and one’s facticity, even though human beings are aware of that very vaguely. Bad faith is basically the act of living inauthentically by rejecting one’s freedom and facticity by saying something like “I had to do it because I had no choice.” An example of bad faith includes that a person accepts that he or she does not have free will and adopts the social roles imposed upon them which prevents them from being the individual they can be. This notion of bad faith connects to two concepts known as voluntarism and determinism. Voluntarism is the belief that our actions are unconditioned and a product of our free will, while determinism is the belief that everything we do has a definite cause and that there is a reason for every action; it lacks the notion of free will. Therefore, the idea of bad faith and determinism go hand in hand by the fact that humans tell a lie to themselves to identify who they are because it is already predetermined by one’s facticity or features of the “being” that limits one’s projects and possibilities. An example of how bad faith and determinism relate is for a human to say “I am a product of my time hence that is why I made that choice.” People tend to stick with “safe and easy” choices failing to recognize the multitude amount of choices available to them. As Sartre puts it, people desire to be a “being-in-itself” than to be a “being-for-itself.” Being-in-itself is something that is permanent and concrete and lacks the ability to change something like an object, while being-for-itself is something that has a “free foundation of its emotions as of its volitions,” basically describing humans because their actions are not permanent and are able to change. (Sartre 316). By desiring permanence and try to be the “being-in-itself,” humans fall into bad faith and their projects are limited by their facticity and fail to recognize the freedom that exists and the ability to make whatever choice they desire like a “being-for-itself.” Connecting this to De Beauvoir’s concept of the “battle of the sexes,” “society…decrees that woman is inferior: she  can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male’s superiority” (De Beauvoir 427). Since the beginning of time, women have been oppressed and considered to be inferior to men, and it is considered to be “the eternal fact of human nature.” The fact it is the “eternal fact of human nature” is itself bad faith because it presents a changeless essence that dictates human behavior. This illustrates the concepts of immanence and transcendence in relation to the “battle of the sexes.” Immanence says that women are confined within their appropriate sphere of activity, while transcendence allows men to “transcend” the physical aspect of their being to “conquer the natural world.” Both men and women want to transcend and “conquer the natural world” with their projects, but men would not be able to have a “stable identity,” and there is a struggle for recognition and “each free being [wishing] to dominate the other” (De Beauvoir 428). However, within the “battle of the sexes,” there is bad faith because society has standards for women and because of those standards women are confined within their own immanence and unable to transcend, while males are able to transcend to attain the natural world. Clearly, Sartre’s concept of bad faith underlies De Beauvoir’s concept of the battle of sexes.

Confined by her immanence within sexist societies, De Beauvoir illustrates that the feminine subject “declares herself as their equal” in relation to the transcendence of the male for the struggle for recognition (De Beauvoir 428). According to De Beauvoir, “the ‘modern’ women accepts masculine values: she prides herself on thinking, taking action, working, creating, on the same terms as men; instead of seeking to disparage them, she declares herself [as his] equal” (De Beauvoir 428). However, in order to understand what De Beauvoir means by being “their equal,” one has to understand the concepts of immanence and transcendence. De Beauvoir uses “immanence” to portray the misogynistic societies, in which women are confined to their sphere of activity in a closed-off realm where women are passive and domestic. “Transcendence” designates the opposing male to transcend the physical aspect of his being and identifying himself as superior. However, men refuse to “accept his companion as an equal in any concrete way” making the women subordinate to men’s superiority and her being immersed in her own immanence (De Beauvoir 428). A woman, according to De Beauvoir, seeks to be considered as an equal, but men want to consider themselves as superior and there is a struggle for recognition between the two sexes; women desire to have projects, accomplishments, and activities, but men have relinquished their existential right to transcendent and be forced to be immersed in their immanence. Due to this oppression, “instead of displaying mutual recognition, each free being wishes to dominate the other” (De Beauvoir 428). This is contrary to Hegel’s concept of mutual recognition. Hegel believed that women have freedom but need to be denied that freedom to have a functional working-class society; there needs to be mutual recognition. On the contrary, De Beauvoir does mention “why men enslaved women in the first place” and that “it might have led to a collaboration between the two sexes” (De Beauvoir 429). However, she mentions that men enslaved women “by means of identification with the other” (De Beauvoir 429). She believes that men oppressed women so that they are able to transcend while, the women are still confined to the society, immersed in her own immanence.

By recognizing the female, the male attempts to “find himself” as a stable identity through oppression and “the devaluation of femininity” to transcend as the male figure. According to De Beauvoir, “man is concerned with the effort to appear male, important, superior” (De Beauvoir 429). Men want to be transcendent, and they desire the freedom to make choices and to carry out projects of their choice. De Beauvoir illustrates that man is afraid of losing his dignity and honor and that “he is afraid of the personage, the image, with which he identifies himself” will be non-existent (De Beauvoir 429). Due to worrying about his “image,” De Beauvoir illustrates the struggle between the transcendence and the immanence and the battle between the two sexes. She believes that in order for man to find himself a stable identity he needs to suppress “the other” (women) so that he (man) can transcend above “the other” to fulfill his projects and desires. Human existence, according to De Beauvoir, is an interplay of these forces: immanence and transcendence. However, throughout generations, men, being privileged with his transcendence, have always relinquished the existential right of women to transcend forcing her to be confined within society’s standards, so that men are able to “find themselves.” Ironically, by finding himself a “stable identity,” man is falling into bad faith because man wants to achieve a transcendent identity that is permanent and once because human beings desire permanence. Additionally, man wants a permanent identity that is recognized in the eyes of his woman and seen as the provider and protector of the household. Therefore, man establishes an “image” that is “permanent” because it does not change, and this is bad faith because man is denying his freedom to continue changing his transcendent image. Via control and domination, man suppresses woman in order to identify himself of who he is and creates an image and persona of what he is, while a woman becomes a transcendent existent trapped in her own immanence of the being.

De Beauvoir believes that the construct of femininity is itself, as Sartre puts it, a product of bad faith because “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (De Beauvoir). Basically, De Beauvoir is saying is that society with all its rules and regulations are confining women to “be a woman.” Since the beginning of time, women have been considered to be a certain way and that they are not considered to be “womanly” if they do something out of line. De Beauvoir is challenging the notion of feminine mystique, which is the idea that woman’s role in society is to be a wife, mother, and housewife and nothing else. However, De Beauvoir is right that the construct of femininity is a product of bad faith because one is accepting that they do not have free will because society is imposing certain standards on them (facticity). Furthermore, logically speaking it makes sense that if someone is taught their entire life to look like a “women,” behave like a “women,” and play a submissive role in the household and in jobs, it is going to affect one’s freedom and authenticity. The construct of femininity is a product of bad faith because society teaches that women should be a certain way and thus it is society is suppressing the women into the confinement of her own immanence. Bad faith is a lie about oneself that can deny not only our freedom, but also our facticity. De Beauvoir mentions that even though a female is grown up as a “woman” because society is imposing those characteristics on a her, she chooses to continue to be “the women” society wants her to be. By choosing to continue to be a woman because of her facticity and denying her freedom, this is why De Beauvoir says that the construct of femininity is a product of bad faith. By lying to oneself and denying one’s freedom and facticity, De Beauvoir illustrates that the construct of femininity is a product of bad faith because women allow themselves to be confined by identities that society imposes on them, and their choices to be ruled by society’s identities that are imposed on them do not reflect who they truly are. Women have the option to rebel, for instance, and demand rights that were stolen from them. They have the right to demand their rights from the men who have oppressed them, but yet they choose to continue to be a “women,” and according to De Beauvoir, this is bad faith. Clearly, the construct of femininity is a product of bad faith.

Indeed, the concept of bad faith, by Jean-Paul Sartre, underlies Simone De Beauvoir’s concept of the so-called “battle of the sexes” to illustrate the struggle for recognition between the males trying to transcend while trapping the females in their own immanence. This struggle for recognition further illustrates how males finds a “stable identity” of himself by oppressing women and fleeing from one’s anxiety from continuingly changing one’s identity. Lastly, De Beauvoir illustrates that the construct of femininity is itself a product of bad faith.

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