I have not failed. I have discovered 1000 things that do not work.
Thomas Alva Edison (via quote-book)
There is an ideology that women are completely equal to men. It is a farce. This isn’t a slap to the face of the Women’s Rights Movement, it’s about accepting the reality of what is not only socially constructed, but psychologically and biologically unshakable and unquestionable. I don’t consider the differences to be weaknesses or downfalls; they’re just differences. I choose to take advantage of these differences. Conquering with the je ne sais quoi of our sex. We will forever be The Other. And you will always succumb to it.
“Perhaps these differences are superficial, perhaps they are destined to disappear. What is certain is that they do most obviously exist.”
“Now, what peculiarly signalises the situation of woman is that she – a free and autonomous being like all human creatures – nevertheless finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other. They propose to stabilise her as object and to doom her to immanence since her transcendence is to be overshadowed and for ever transcended by another ego (conscience) which is essential and sovereign. The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspirations of every subject (ego) – who always regards the self as the essential and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential. How can a human being in woman’s situation attain fulfilment? What roads are open to her? Which are blocked? How can independence be recovered in a state of dependency? What circumstances limit woman’s liberty and how can they be overcome? These are the fundamental questions on which I would fain throw some light. This means that I am interested in the fortunes of the individual as defined not in terms of happiness but in terms of liberty.”
- Simone de Beauvoir
(Source: comicallyvintage, via magalomania)
