Beauvoir believes that the self needs otherness to define itself as a subject. The category of otherness, therefore, is necessary in the constitution of the self as self. Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought. Woman is constantly affirmed as the Other by man who takes on the role of self. Beauvoir explains in his Introduction, the woman "is the accidental, the inessential, as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject; he is the Absolute, she is the Other" (Beauvoir 6). For an individual to describe himself, he must also describe something opposite to himself. There is also a negative undertone when you refer to yourself as a woman, while when you refer to a man it is positive because the man represents the totality of human beings when women are thought of as the Other compared to men seen as the Absolute. Therefore, one becomes a woman defined by a man because of his existence. In other words, you become a woman by existing as a woman and living as a woman is as old as it gets
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