(Although we may be moving towards a genderless future, it is not the case now. One’s gender is a primary influence on one’s experience of the world, as is race, class level, income, sexual orientation, attractiveness, and probably more things than I have named. This post is limited to gender and specifically to women.)
Existentialism essentially views the human experience as an innate anxiety that drives an individual’s search to assign meaning. Feminism more specifically, is the philosophy of assigning meaning from the perspective of the feminine, the actual experience of being a woman. Existential feminism explores meaning through the existence of being woman. Which sounds like just the same thing, but, It isn’t. It isn’t possible to understand the experience of being a woman without using a feminist lens, because existentialism, as in the rest of academia, politics, the economy, media, the arts, and culture; was designed by and for men, often with the specific purpose of excluding women. Woman will always be an interloper in patriarchal society, the outsider. It is also why feminism is more commonly seen as the struggle of women for equality, because that is typically the situation women find themselves in.
What is it like then, to be a woman?
That might be a subjective question, each woman that answers it will have unique responses; but, her experiences will be shaped by similar social conditions. These conditions have been imposed on them by men. Consequently, to be a woman, to be female, is to be ‘the other’. The original and the authentic is masculine, it is the default. Woman is seen within this paradigm as a modification of man. It is why we have doctors and women doctors, artists and female artists, leaders and female leaders. As if a woman achieving any thing at all is a deviation of her kind. Even today as women are becoming world leaders in all aspects of life, she is still operating in his territory, by his rules, with his consent.
One of the most universal conditions for women is being judged by one’s beauty. All women have experienced this, all of them. Some will be found beautiful, and others will be found wanting. On the surface, it seems simple enough that the beautiful are blessed, and the ugly are unfortunate, but for both the beautiful and the ugly the power of judgement rests on the viewer and diminishes the agency of the object. The anxiety of waiting for this judgement is the same regardless of how one is judged. It is not a trivial thing. For the greater part of human history women have relied on being attractive to provide themselves with food, shelter, and social power, as they were excluded from any meaningful participation in the economy. What is beautiful may vary culture to culture, and era to era, it may even be in the eye of the beholder, but for women beauty is an imperative.
To be a woman is to be an object. It is to always be in a beauty pageant, to be looked over, appraised, be waiting for the golden apple, the apple of discord, to be in competition for the most beautiful. This occurs even when one does not choose to be in the competition. The social judgement of women’s beauty is internalized because it is beauty in a woman that is valued in society. A woman may be occupied with the stars if she is an astro-physicist, the structure of the smallest particles if she is a physicist, curing cancer, creating brilliant art, or running the fastest race possible, but when she steps in to the public eye she will always be appraised on her beauty first.
Women have periods, they bleed monthly, this is one of the core experiences of being a woman; including the not having it, which means one is ill, pregnant, or has passed into the shadowy realm of old age. The act of bleeding is the same, the menstrual cycle is the same, and most of the world has the same response to menstrual blood. There are cultures that have extreme views on menstrual blood such as not being able to touch food, go to a church, or even be in the company of men. Regardless of the liberality, or exclusion of the menstrual cycle, all of this is still determined by men.
In the domain of woman, to be a woman is to be concerned with motherhood. Either through the birth of one’s own children, or through the efforts one must go to to avoid having children. Pregnancy and birth are the sole domain of women, and the responsibilities of raising and caring for children is defaulted to women, as is the care of the household. So motherhood is exalted for women, it is seen as fulfilling a sacred purpose, but again, this role of ‘sacred mother’ was assigned by men.
In school we learn about the deeds of men, read male writers and understand the world through the eyes of male scientists. Not because women are incapable, indeed the legacies of women that have been able to navigate their fields prove otherwise, but because for whatever reason women were denied inclusion since the beginning of human civilization. Why?
In Volume 1 of The Second Sex de Beauvoir looks at this question with an analysis of biological data, history, and the myths and superstitions that have been constructed to explain the role of women in human culture.
As Simone de Beauvoir points out in The Second Sex, even the social structures of our matrilineal societies were designed by men so they could feel comfortable with the mysteries of birth, and death that they experienced in the world around them.
Perhaps this does not need to always be the way our society is, but if women are to operate from a place of equality and agency within our culture, well, we still have work to do.
I know these views can be seen as excluding trans-women, and that is certainly not my intention, to be exclusive, as a goal. Being a trans-women has its own existential reality. Rather these things are the core experiences of being a woman and not participating in them carries with it a burden on women also. Menopausal woman often fear a demise in their status as women, as do infertile women. I also do not want to trivialize the concerns of men, there are many conditions of masculinity that are as difficult a burden to bare.