Wednesday’s class was Hazel Barnes examining the works of Sartre and looking for misogynistic clues in his writings. To deviate a little bit, I would like to focus on Barnes’ translation of Sartre’s philosophy of the body and consciousness. Sartre says that consciousness is the body and at the same time, transcends the body. This makes sense in that consciousness is not a tangible object, but it can manifest itself into what we are: humans. Without consciousness, how would we know our place in the world? If the body and consciousness can be separate, then Barnes’ reply is that “neither anatomy nor physiology” can describe who we are. Those two traits do not make us who we are. If I understand this correctly in the proper context, in regards to feminism, men and women are no different. We are not seen as humans with this certain gender or body part, but as a body of consciousness. Just because a child is born female does not mean that she must grow up into a “female mold”, wearing dresses and having tea parties. Where does this kind of “female mold” originate then? Was it placed there by society or did we bring it into actuality? Society tells us that we have standards that we need to live by. But who created this society? WE DID! The pressures that you feel from society are the pressures that we have forced on ourselves. A blind slap in the face. So society fuels into the stereotyping of genders, which Barnes says advocates misogyny. This means that it is up to us to break these gender standards we are “forced” to live in. When the consciousness is the body, we are aware for two reasons: our self-awareness and the awareness from others. In the case of Barnes, she views her body as an object and a “treacherous instrument”. She views her body as on object because she is consciously aware of it. However, it is a “treacherous instrument” because society has sexualized females.