Shortly into de Beauvoir’s writing and I had already found plenty to write about, or more accurately,

plenty to enrage me! One of my bosses would say, “Scott is being a diva again!” Reality is, I have always
found myself being a supporter of women’s equality and am not afraid to say something about it. Well
the part that infuriated me was one of the people our author had quoted. To exemplify not only how
unfair and derogatory of a fashion women have been treated over the course of history, but thought of
as well. “The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,” said Aristotle; “we should
regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.” Now I realize that Aristotle is
thought of as one of the greatest people of all time, just doing a Google search yields literally millions of
results, like this quote from Stanford University, “Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) numbers among the greatest
philosophers of all time” (Shields). Even the Owl at Purdue used Aristotle when they gave an example of
an entry for the “Works Cited” page. Aristotle was many things, but judging by his statement here,
being enlightened was not one of those things. If I had been a student in Aristotle’s court, like
Alexander the Great, I would have asked, “How can you have something that’s naturally defective?”
Sounds a lot like ‘naturally intuitive,’ if you ask me!

Thomas and I were discussing the reading when he noted, it felt like a Marxist read and considered
mentioning that in his post. His conclusion was later confirmed in class. I was very impressed and told
him so. I asked him if he noticed the URL, web page address, at the bottom of the page, to which he
indicated he had not. I mentioned it was from Marxist.org and we further discussed the Marxist Literary
Critiquing Method, noting that I view it as the “Underdog Method.” I also suggested he pick up English
as a minor, because he’d be a natural! What an excellent choice of Methods for applying to a writing
about women . Personally, having been introduced to Critiquing Methods some sixty years after our
author wrote this piece, I would logically choose the Feminist Literary Critiquing Method. When I stop
and think about it, the Feminist Method does seem to pattern itself after Marxist Theory, instead of
workers being the focus of oppression, women are.

I am somewhat perplexed about the whole idea of binary opposition. Why does there need to
automatically be opposition in a binary state? Is this an “alpha male” thing? I find it virtually impossible
to view women as “the opposing side” of humanity.

I have some problems with the whole idea of other. The word itself seems oppositionary, derogatory
and intended to alienate or exclude from the norm. Latin is a good example of that, having masculine,
feminine and neutered words. Let’s say there was a situation involving a million women, so long as
there is one man in the group, the masculine word would be utilized. Now that’s just down right
disrespectful!
Works Cited

Shields, Christopher, Edward N. Zalta. ed. "Aristotle", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford
University. Spring 2012 Edition.25 Sep. 2008. Web. 10 Feb. 2012.
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/>