We Are Not Born Submissive: How the Patriarchy Shapes Women's Lives by Manon Garcia

Abstract

Reviewed by: We Are Not Born Submissive: How the Patriarchy Shapes Women's Lives by Manon Garcia Mariah Devereux Herbeck (bio) Garcia, Manon. We Are Not Born Submissive: How the Patriarchy Shapes Women's Lives. Princeton UP, 2021. Pp [i]-xiv; 234. ISBN 978-0-691-20182-5. $27.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-691-22320-9. $22.95 (paper). Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 The Second Sex finds renewed significance for the twenty-first century in Manon Garcia's We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women's Lives. Garcia's research is not based solely on the indisputable bible of second-wave feminism, nor does it claim to analyze every aspect of the feminist manifesto, however, she describes succinctly how de Beauvoir's philosophy is key to understanding women's submission (and eventual path toward liberation) in Western society: "this book is not primarily a book on de Beauvoir's philosophy but it argues that the best way to understand women's submission is to think with Beauvoir" (author's emphasis, 21). Garcia inspires the reader to return to the seminal text, as well as to the work of other influential thinkers from Catharine MacKinnon and Gayatri Spivak to Hegel and Martin Heidegger for answers to the following question: why do some women submit to and perpetuate the patriarchy? In response to this question, as well as to other related inquiries, the book relies heavily on The Second Sex as it peels back the layers of social, political, religious and historical factors that create and (re)affirm the gender hierarchy that determines submission as the only viable option for (many) women. In the work's preface and conclusion, Garcia book-ends her research with reflection on the relationship of her manuscript to the contemporary #MeToo movement and society's response to the women involved—seen as victims by some and by others as manipulators who are willing to submit to men in order to advance their careers. In chapter one, she guides the reader in a detailed examination of the definitions of "domination" and "submission," underlining, in particular, that "to submit" is paradoxically an active verb: "it is an activity in passivity: what the subject decides, whatever the degree of rationality or complexity of this decision is to not be the one who decides" (17). Unless one is threatened with violence or physically restrained, submission is the result of a conscious decision, and an appalling one at that since it requires that one renounce one's freedom, as Garcia demonstrates via Rousseau's The Social Contract: "to deprive [man's] will of all freedom is to deprive his actions of all morality" (2). However, for women, "submission is prescribed as the normal, moral, and natural behavior" (3). Subsequently, Garcia poses a series of related questions: Is submission feminine? Is femininity a submission? Are women masochistic? And [End Page 186] finally, importantly, she questions whether or not submission is the "experience of all women" (106). As Garcia deftly explains, to answer these questions, one must invert the examination of the hierarchy; instead of viewing it from the top down (Rousseau's and other male philosophers' point of view), we must view submission from the perspective of those who live it, in this case, women. Simone de Beauvoir's work provides an ideal launchpad for such an investigation given her "meticulous research on a multiplicity of diaries, memoirs of famous women, and studies in psychology and sociology" (97). Throughout her work, Garcia repeatedly appreciates de Beauvoir as a philosopher in her own right (independent from her partner, Jean-Paul Sartre), such that, at times, the book feels like a defense of de Beauvoir as much as a defense of a woman's right to freedom from predestined submission. This is not a slight of the book since Garcia's detailed analysis of the similarities and differences between the philosophers' approaches to existentialism are detailed and informative. In conclusion, Garcia demonstrates to what extent—contrary to the opening analysis of the definition of submission—women do not have a choice; one's destiny is "predetermined by social norms" (194). However, she does her best to end on a hopeful note...