ABSTRACT
In a sense, it’s all been said. Women and men are equal, but they differ in almost every way possible; there is an innate female nature, but only woman’s subject status explains the existence of masculinity and femininity; all the deplored inequalities will disappear when the struggle for women’s liberation achieves its goals, but there is a kind of fate in this area. To Simone de Beauvoir’s celebrated assertion that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” Evelyne Sullerot replies, “One is indeed born a woman,” and Odette Thibaut responds in turn, “One is born and also becomes, a woman” (30, 351, 363).*
