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I chose to focus on Simone de Beauvoir for my main project this semester, in part because of all the writers we've become acquainted with, I feel that she is the one who quibbles least over the very specific, debatable goals and conditions of the feminist.  The Second Sex is remarkably thorough and detailed in its cataloguing of the various factors that have shaped the "feminine" as we know it, but de Beauvoir's argument is really very simple, and very relevant to feminism, no matter how one looks at it.  Woman is charged with the impossible task of being both human and woman, two roles which are entirely incompatible. 

I find there to be so much overlap between The Second Sex and Susan Stryker's discussion of monstrousness.  To be the "other," means to exist as an object.  An object can only occupy a state of being-in-itself, self-contained, limited, lacking in all creative desire for transcendence.  Since the "other" does not construct her own identity as the other, she relies upon the men, or the heteronormative culture to tell her who she is.  She is thus absolved from the responsibility of creating a meaningful life for herself, and doomed to live a meaningless one, at best achieving the state of being-for-others.

Where Simone de Beauvoir wished to break women out of the "other" category, Susan Stryker wants reclaim the "other," and make it something powerful.  I see the appeal of Stryker's vision, but I also recall a statement Alexander made during yesterday's class, regarding the transgendered individual's need to constantly preface their ideas or experiences with the reminder that they too are human beings.  This comment highlights the uphill battle, or the added handicap that is imposed on anyone who chooses to remain the other. I wonder how limited we human beings are in our ability to see the other as being-for-itself?