The Second Sex (9 page)

The most complex and concretely individualized life is found in mammals.
The split of the two vital moments, maintaining and creating, takes place definitively in the separation of the sexes. In this branching out—and considering vertebrates only—the mother has the closest connection to her offspring, whereas the father is more uninterested; the whole organism of the female is adapted to and determined by the servitude of maternity, while the sexual initiative is the prerogative of the male. The female is the prey of the species; for one or two seasons, depending on the case, her whole life is regulated by a sexual cycle—the estrous cycle—whose length and periodicity vary from one species to another. This cycle has two phases: during the first one the ova mature (the number varies according to the species), and a nidification process occurs in the womb; in the second phase a fat necrosis is produced, ending in the elimination of the structure, that is a whitish discharge. The estrus corresponds to the period of heat; but heat in the female is rather passive; she is ready to receive the male, she waits for him; for mammals—and some birds—she might invite him; but she limits herself to calling him by noises, displays, or exhibitions; she could never impose coitus. That decision is up to him in the end. Even for insects where the female has major privileges and consents to total sacrifice for the species, it is usually the male that provokes fertilization; male fish often invite the female to spawn by their presence or by touching; for amphibians, the male acts as a stimulator. But for birds and above all mammals, the male imposes himself on her; very often she submits to him with indifference or even resists him. Whether she is provocative or consensual, it is he who
takes
her: she is
taken
. The word often has a very precise meaning: either because he has specific organs or because he is stronger, the male grabs and immobilizes her; he is the one that actively makes the coitus movements; for many insects, birds, and mammals, he penetrates her. In that regard, she is like a raped interiority. The male does not do violence to the species, because the species can only perpetuate itself by renewal; it would perish if ova and sperm did not meet; but the female whose job it is to protect the egg encloses it in herself, and her body that constitutes a shelter for the egg removes it from the male’s fertilizing action; there is thus a resistance that has to be broken down, and so by penetrating the egg the male realizes himself as activity. His domination is expressed by the coital position of almost all animals; the male is
on
the female. And the organ he uses is incontestably material too, but it is seen in an animated state: it is a tool, while the female organ in this operation is merely an inert receptacle. The male deposits his sperm; the female receives it. Thus, although she plays a fundamentally active role in procreation, she endures coitus, which alienates her from herself by penetration and internal fertilization;
although she feels the sexual need as an individual need—since in heat she might seek out the male—she nevertheless experiences the sexual adventure in its immediacy as an interior story and not in relation to the world and to others. But the fundamental difference between male and female mammals is that in the same quick instant, the sperm, by which the male’s life transcends into another, becomes foreign to it and is separated from its body; thus the male, at the very moment it goes beyond its individuality, encloses itself once again in it. By contrast, the ovum began to separate itself from the female when, ripe, it released itself from the follicle to fall into the oviduct; penetrated by a foreign gamete, it implants itself in the uterus: first violated, the female is then alienated; she carries the fetus in her womb for varying stages of maturation depending on the species: the guinea pig is born almost adult; the dog close to a fetal state; inhabited by another who is nourished by her substance, the female is both herself and other than herself during the whole gestation period; after delivery, she feeds the newborn with milk from her breasts. This makes it difficult to know when it can be considered autonomous: at fertilization, birth, or weaning? It is noteworthy that the more the female becomes a separate individual, the more imperiously the living continuity is affirmed beyond any separation. The fish or the bird that expels the virgin ovum or the fertilized egg is less prey to its offspring than the female mammal. The female mammal recovers her autonomy after the birth of the young: a distance is thus established between her and them; and starting from this separation, she devotes herself to them; she takes care of them, showing initiative and invention; she fights to defend them against other animals and even becomes aggressive. But she does not usually seek to affirm her individuality; she does not oppose either males or females; she does not have a fighting instinct;
⁵
in spite of Darwin’s assertions, disparaged today, the female in general accepts the male that presents himself. It is not that she lacks individual qualities—far from it; in periods when she escapes the servitude of maternity, she can sometimes be the male’s equal: the mare is as quick as the stallion, the female hound has as keen a nose as the male, female monkeys show as much intelligence as males when tested. But this individuality is not asserted: the female abdicates it for the benefit of the species that demands this abdication.

The male’s destiny is very different; it has just been shown that in his very surpassing, he separates himself and is confirmed in himself. This feature
is constant from insects to higher animals. Even fish and cetaceans that live in schools, loosely gathered within the group, tear themselves away when in heat; they isolate themselves and become aggressive toward other males. While sexuality is immediate for the female, it is indirect in the male: he actively bridges the distance between desire and its satisfaction; he moves, seeks, feels the female, caresses her, immobilizes her before penetrating; the organs for the functions of relation, locomotion, and prehension are often better developed in the male. It is noteworthy that the active impulsion that produces his sperm’s multiplication is accompanied by brilliant feathers, shiny scales, horns, antlers, a crest, song, exuberance; neither the “wedding attire” he puts on in heat nor the displays of seduction are now thought to have a selective finality; but they are witness to the power of life that flourishes in him with gratuitous and magnificent splendor. This vital generosity, the activity deployed in mating and in coitus itself, the dominating affirmation of his power over the female—all of this contributes to positing the individual as such at the moment he surpasses himself. Hegel is right to see the subjective element in the male while the female remains enclosed in the species. Subjectivity and separateness immediately mean conflict. Aggressiveness is one of the characteristics of the male in heat. It cannot be explained by competition, since there are about the same number of females as males; it is rather competition that is explained by this combative will. It is as if before procreating, the male, claiming as his very own the act that perpetuates the species, confirms the reality of his individuality in his fight against his fellow creatures. The species inhabits the female and absorbs much of her individual life; the male, by contrast, integrates specific living forces in his individual life. He is undoubtedly also subject to laws that surpass him; he experiences spermatogenesis and periodic heats; but these processes affect the organism as a whole much less than the estrus cycle; neither sperm production nor ovogenesis as such is tiring: the absorbing job for the female is the development of the egg into an adult animal. Coitus is a rapid operation that does not reduce the male’s vitality. He manifests almost no paternal instinct. He very often abandons the female after mating. When he remains near her as head of a family group (monogamic family, harem, or herd), he plays a protective and nurturing role vis-à-vis the whole community; it is rare for him to take a direct interest in the children. In those species that are favorable to the flourishing of individual life, the male’s effort at autonomy—which, in the lower animals, leads to its ruin—is crowned with success. He is usually bigger than the female, stronger, quicker, more adventurous; he leads a more independent life whose activities are more gratuitous; he is
more conquering, more imperious: in animal societies, it is he who commands.

In nature nothing is ever completely clear: the two types, male and female, are not always sharply distinguished; there is often a dimorphism—the color of the coat, the placement of the mottling—that seems absolutely contingent; it does happen, though, that the two types are not distinguishable, their functions barely differentiated, as was seen with fish. However, as a whole and especially at the top of the animal scale, the two sexes represent two diverse aspects of the species’ life. Their opposition is not, as has been claimed, one of passivity and activity: not only is the ovum nucleus active, but the development of the embryo is also a living process and not a mechanical one. It would be too simple to define this opposition as one of change and permanence: the sperm creates only because its vitality is maintained in the egg; the ovum can only exist by surpassing itself or else it regresses and degenerates. But it is true that in both these active operations—maintenance and creation—the synthesis of becoming is not realized in the same way. Maintaining means denying the dispersion of instants, thereby affirming continuity in the course of their outpouring; creating means exploding an irreducible and separate present within a temporal unity, and it is also true that for the female it is the continuity of life that seeks to realize itself in spite of separation, while separation into new and individualized forces is brought about by male initiative; he can affirm himself in his autonomy; he integrates the specific energy into his own life; by contrast, female individuality is fought by the interest of the species; she seems possessed by outside forces: alienated. This explains why sexual opposition increases rather than abates when the individuality of organisms asserts itself. The male finds more and more ways to use the forces of which he is master; the female feels her subjugation more and more; the conflict between her own interests and those of the generating forces that inhabit her exasperates her. Giving birth for cows and mares is far more painful and dangerous than for female mice and rabbits. Woman, the most individualized of females, is also the most fragile, the one who experiences her destiny the most dramatically and who distinguishes herself the most significantly from her male.

In the human species as in most others, almost as many individuals of both sexes are born
(100
girls for 104 boys); embryonic evolution is analogous; however, the original epithelium remains neuter longer in the female fetus; as a result, it is subjected to hormonal influence over a longer period, and its development is more often inverted; most hermaphrodites are thought to be genotypically female subjects who are masculinized later: it
could be said that the male organism is immediately defined as male, whereas the female embryo is reluctant to accept its femaleness; but these tentative beginnings of fetal life are not yet well enough understood for them to be assigned a meaning. Once formed, the genital apparatus is symmetrical in both sexes; the hormones of each type belong to the same chemical family, the sterols, and when all things are considered, all of them derive from cholesterol; they order the secondary differentiation of the soma. Neither their formula nor their anatomical singularities define the human female as such. Her functional evolution is what distinguishes her from the male. Man’s development is comparatively simple. From birth to puberty, he grows more or less regularly; at around fifteen or sixteen years old, spermatogenesis begins and continues until old age; hormone production occurs at the same time and marks the male constitution of the soma. When that happens, the male’s sex life is normally integrated into his individual existence: in terms of desire and coitus, his surpassing toward the species is an integral part of the subjective moment of his transcendence: he
is
his body. Woman’s history is much more complex. At the beginning of embryonic life, the supply of ovocytes is definitively formed; the ovary contains about fifty thousand ova, and each one is enclosed in a follicle, with about four hundred reaching maturity. At the moment of birth the species has taken possession of her and seeks to affirm itself; on coming into the world, the woman goes through a kind of first puberty; ovocytes suddenly grow bigger; then the ovary reduces by about one-fifth. One could say that the child was granted a reprieve; while its organism develops, its genital system remains more or less stationary. Some follicles swell up without reaching maturity; the girl’s growth is analogous to the boy’s: at the same age she is often bigger and heavier than he. But at puberty the species reasserts its rights: influenced by ovarian secretions, the number of growing follicles increases, the ovary becomes congested and grows, one of the ova reaches maturity, and the menstrual cycle begins; the genital system attains its definitive size and form, the soma becomes feminized, and the endocrine balance is set up. It is worth noting that this event has all the characteristics of a crisis; the woman’s body does not accept the species’ installation in her without a fight; and this fight weakens and endangers her; before puberty, about the same number of girls die for every 100 boys: from fourteen to eighteen, 128 girls die for every 100 boys, and from eighteen to twenty-two 105 girls for every 100 boys. This is the period when chlorosis, tuberculosis, scoliosis, osteomyelitis, and such strike. Puberty is abnormally early for some subjects: it can occur at four or five years of age. For others, it does not begin at all: the subject is infantile, suffering from
amenorrhea or dysmenorrhea. Some women manifest virile characteristics: too many secretions from the adrenal glands give them masculine characteristics. These anomalies are absolutely not a victory of the individual over the tyranny of the species: there is no way to escape that tyranny because it enslaves individual life at the same time that it nourishes it; this duality can be seen in the ovarian functions; the woman’s vitality takes root in the ovary, that of the man in the testicles: in both cases the castrated individual is not only sterile: it regresses and degenerates; un-“formed” and badly formed, the whole organism is impoverished and out of balance; it can only flourish with the flourishing of the genital system; and yet many genital phenomena are not in the interest of the subject’s individual life and even put it in danger. The mammary glands that develop at puberty have no role in the woman’s individual economy: they can be removed at any moment in her life. The finality of many ovarian secretions is in the egg, in its maturity, in the adaptation of the uterus for its needs: for the organism as a whole, they are a factor of imbalance more than regulation; the woman is more adapted to the egg’s needs than to herself. From puberty to menopause she is the principal site of a story that takes place in her and does not concern her personally. Anglo-Saxons call menstruation “the curse,” and it is true that there is no individual finality in the menstrual cycle. It was thought in Aristotle’s time that the blood that flowed each month, if fertilization occurred, was to constitute the flesh and blood of the child; the truth of this old theory is that women endlessly start up the labor of gestation. For other mammals, this estrous cycle plays itself out during one season; there is no bloody flow: only in higher monkeys and women does this cycle take place in pain and blood.
⁶
For about fourteen days one of the Graafian follicles that envelops the eggs increases in volume and ripens at the same time that the ovary secretes the hormone folliculin at the level of the follicle. Ovulation takes place on the fourteenth day: the walls of the follicle disintegrate (sometimes causing a slight hemorrhage); the egg falls into the fallopian tubes while the opening evolves into the yellow body. Then begins the second or corpus luteum phase characterized by the secretion of the hormone progesterone that acts on the uterus. The uterus changes in that the wall’s capillary system swells, creases, and waffles, forming a kind of lacework; this is the construction of a cradle in the womb
meant to receive the fertilized egg. As these cellular transformations are irreversible, this construction is not reabsorbed in cases where there is no fertilization: in other mammals the useless debris is possibly carried off by the lymph vessels. But for woman when the endometrial lace collapses, there is an exfoliation of the lining, the capillaries open up, and a bloody mass seeps out. Then, while the corpus luteum is reconstituted, a new follicular phase begins. This complex process, whose details are still quite mysterious, sets the whole body in motion as it is accompanied by hormonal secretions that act on the thyroid and pituitary glands, the central and peripheral nervous systems, and thus on all the organs. Almost all women—more than 85 percent—show signs of distress during this period. Blood pressure rises before the beginning of the flow of blood and then falls; the pulse rate and often the temperature increase; there are frequent cases of fever; the abdomen is painful; there is often constipation and then diarrhea, an increase in the liver volume, urea retention, albumin deficiency, or micro albumin; many women have hyperemia of the pituitary gland (sore throat), and others complain of auditory and visual problems; there is a rise in perspiration secretions accompanied by a sometimes strong sui generis odor at the beginning of and often throughout the menstrual period. Basal metabolism increases. The number of red blood cells decreases; however, the blood carries substances usually kept in reserve in the tissues, in particular calcium salts; these salts act on the ovary, on the thyroid that is overactive, and on the pituitary gland that regulates the metamorphosis of the activated uterine tissue; this glandular instability weakens the nervous system: the central nervous system is affected, often causing headaches, and the peripheral nervous system overreacts: the automatic control by the central nervous system is reduced, which relaxes the reflexes and the convulsive complexes and is manifested in great mood changes: woman is more emotional, nervous, and irritable than usual and can manifest serious psychological problems. This is when she feels most acutely that her body is an alienated opaque thing; it is the prey of a stubborn and foreign life that makes and unmakes a crib in her every month; every month a child is prepared to be born and is aborted in the flow of the crimson tide; woman
is
her body as man
is
his,
⁷
but her body is something other than her.