xxiv INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION XXV between the sexes,that one of the contrasting terms is set up as the other time,as the Negroes of Haiti and others have proved;but it sole essential,denying any relativity in regard to its correlative and might seem that a natural condition is beyond the possibility of defining the latter as pure otherness?Why is it that women do not change.In truth,however,the nature of things is no more immutably dispute male sovereignty?No subject will readily volunteer to become given,once for all,than is historical reality.If woman seems to be the the object,the inessential;it is not the Other who,in defining himself inessential which never becomes the essential,it is because she her- as the Other,establishes the One.The Other is posed as such by the self fails to bring about this change.Proletarians say"We";Negroes One in defining himself as the One.But if the Other is not to regain also.Regarding themselves as subjects,they transform the bourgeois, the status of being the One,he must be submissive enough to accept the whites,into "others."But women do not say"We,"except at this alien point of view.Whence comes this submission in the case some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration;men say of woman? "women,"and women use the same word in referring to themselves. There are,to be sure,other cases in which a certain category has They do not authentically assume a subjective attitude.The prole- been able to dominate another completely for a time.Very often this tarians have accomplished the revolution in Russia,the Negroes in privilege depends upon inequality of numbers-the majority imposes Haiti,the Indo-Chinese are battling for it in Indo-China;but the its rule upon the minority or persecutes it.But women are not a mi- women's effort has never been anything more than a symbolic agita- nority,like the American Negroes or the Jews;there arc as many tion.They have gained only what men have been willing to grant; women as men on earth.Again,the two groups concerned have often they have taken nothing,they have only received. been originally independent;they may have been formerly unaware The reason for this is that women lack concrete means for organiz- of each other's existence,or perhaps they recognized each other's au- ing themselves into a unit which can stand face to face with the cor- tonomy.But a historical event has resulted in the subjugation of the relative unit.They have no past,no history,no religion of their own; weaker by the stronger.The scattering of the Jews,the introduction and they have no such solidarity of work and interest as that of of slavery into America,the conquests of imperialism are examples in the proletariat.They are not even promiscuously herded together in the point.In these cases the oppressed retained at least the memory of way that creates community feeling among the American Negroes,the former days;they possessed in common a past,a tradition,sometimes ghetto Jews,the workers of Saint-Denis,or the factory hands of Re- a religion or a culture. nault.They live dispersed among the males,attached through resi- The parallel drawn by Bebel between women and the proletariat is dence,housework,economic condition,and social standing to certain valid in that neither ever formed a minority or a separate collective men-fathers or husbands-more firmly than they are to other women. unit of mankind.And instead of a single historical event it is in both If they belong to the bourgeoisie,they feel solidarity with men of that cases a historical development that explains their status as a class and class,not with proletarian women;if they are white,their allegiance accounts for the membership of particular individuals in that class. is to white men,not to Negro women.The proletariat can propose to But proletarians have not always existed,whereas there have always massacre the ruling class,and a sufficiently fanatical Jew or Negro been women.They are women in virtue of their anatomy and physi- might dream of getting sole possession of the atomic bomb and mak- ology.Throughout history they have always been subordinated to ing humanity wholly Jewish or black;but woman cannot even dream men,'and hence their dependency is not the result of a historical of exterminating the males.The bond that unites her to her oppres- event or a social change-it was not something that occurred.The sors is not comparable to any other.The division of the sexes is a reason why otherness in this case seems to be an absolute is in part biological fact,not an event in human history.Male and female stand that it lacks the contingent or incidental nature of historical facts.A opposed within a primordial Mitsein,and woman has not broken it. condition brought about at a certain time can be abolished at some The couple is a fundamental unity with its two halves riveted to- ..With rare exceptions,perhaps,hke certain matriarchal rulers,queens,and gether,and the cleavage of socicty along the line of sex is impossible. the like.-T8. See Part II,ch.viii