Most feminists in France came to feminism after '68 as a result of the hypocrisy they experienced in leftist movements. In these movements, where everyone believed there was going to be true equality, fraternity between men and women, and that together they were going to struggle against this rotten society, even there they noticed that the leftists, the militants, kept them "in their place." Women made the coffee while the others did the talking; they were the ones who typed the letters.
Simone de BeauvoirThe renewed use of lobotomy today is particularly applicable to women: Because they do routine things, it is possible to take away their spirit of revolt, of debate, of criticism, and still leave them perfectly capable of making stews or washing dishes. It's terrible, this tendency to consider women something dangerous to society.
Simone de BeauvoirEvery war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.
Simone de BeauvoirRepresentation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.
Simone de BeauvoirBetween women love is contemplative; caresses are intended less to gain possession of the other than gradually to re-create the self through her; separateness is abolished, there is no struggle, no victory, no defeat; in exact reciprocity each is at once subject and object, sovereign and slave; duality become mutuality.
Simone de Beauvoir