xxvi INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION xxvii Here is to be found the basic trait of woman:she is the Other in a prestige that the education of children tends in every way to support, totality of which the two components are necessary to one another. for the present enshrines the past-and in the past all history has been One could suppose that this reciprocity might have facilitated the made by men.At the present time,when women are beginning to liberation of woman.When Hercules sat at the feet of Omphale and take part in the affairs of the world,it is still a world that belongs to helped with her spinning,his desire for her held him captive;but why men-they have no doubt of it at all and women have scarcely any. did she fail to gain a lasting power?To revenge herself on Jason, Ta decline to be the Other,to refuse to be a party to the deal-this Medea killed their children;and this grim legend would seem to sug- would be for women to renounce all the advantages conferred upon gest that she might have obtained a formidable influence over him them by their alliance with the superior caste.Man-the-sovereign will through his love for his offspring.In Lysistrata Aristophanes gaily de- provide woman-the-liege with material protection and will undertake picts a band of women who joined forces to gain social ends through the moral justification of her existence;thus she can evade at once the sexual needs of their men;but this is only a play.In the legend of both economic risk and the metaphysical risk of a liberty in which the Sabine women,the latter soon abandoned their plan of remaining ends and aims must be contrived without assistance.Indecd,along sterile to punish their ravishers.In truth woman has not been socially with the ethical urge of cach individual to affirm his subjective ex- emancipated through man's need-sexual desire and the desire for istence,there is also the temptation to forgo liberty and become a offspring-which makes the male dependent for satisfaction upon the thing.This is an inauspicious road,for he who takes it-passive,lost, female. ruined-becomes henceforth the creature of another's will,frustrated Master and slave,also,are united by a reciprocal need,in this case in his transcendence and deprived of every value.But it is an easy economic,which does not liberate the slave.In the relation of master road;on it one avoids the strain involved in undertaking an authentic to slave the master does not make a point of the necd that he has for existence.When man makes of woman the Other,he may,then,ex- the other;he has in his grasp the power of satisfying this need through pect her to manifest deep-seated tendencies toward complicity.Thus, his own action;whereas the slave,in his dependent condition,his woman may fail to lay claim to the status of subject because she lacks hope and fear,is quite conscious of the necd he has for his master. definite resources,because she fcels the necessary bond that ties her Even if the need is at bottom equally.urgent for both,it always works to man regardless of reciprocity,and because she is often very well in favor of the oppressor and against the oppressed.That is why the pleased with her role as the Other. liberation of the working class,for example,has been slow. But it will be asked at once:how did all this begin?It is easy to Now,woman has always been man's dcpendent,if not his slave;the see that the duality of the sexes,like any duality,gives risc to conflict. two sexes have never shared the world in cquality.And even today And doubtless the winner will assume the status of absolute.But why woman is heavily handicapped,though her situation is beginning to should man have won from the start?It seems possible that women change.Almost nowhere is her legal status the same as man's,'and could have won the victory;or that the outcome of the conflict might frequently it is much to her disadvantage.Even when her rights are never have been decided.How is it that this world has always be- legally recognized in the abstract,long-standing custom prevents their longed to the men and that things have begun to change only re- full expression in the mores.In the economic sphere men and women cently?Is this change a good thing?Will it bring about an equal can almost be said to make up two castes;other things being equal, sharing of the world between men and women? the former hold the better jobs,get higher wages,and have more op- These questions are not new,and they have often been answered. portunity for success than their new competitors.In industry and poli- But the very fact that woman is the Other tends to cast suspicion tics men have a great many more positions and they monopolize the upon all the justifications that men have ever been able to provide for most important posts.In addition to all this,they enjoy a traditional it.These have all too evidently been dictated by men's interest.A little- 7 At the moment an "equal rights"amendment to the Constitution of the known feminist of the seventeenth century,Poulain de la Barre,put United States is before Congress.-TR. it this way:"All that has been written about women by men should