Cheirosa '93

First scene

Praise kink goes brrrr. That sincere praise delivered “from above”, given his authority as a professor, is just stupidly hot. Despite his kind words, the asymmetry is still lingering. He just seems intrigued by the student who dared to challenge the master (and who did it well enough to please and amuse him) 

Second scene (+ third scene as additional evidence of what I’m referring to)

There is something so intellectually rape-y about it to me. It drives me crazy with desire - and then shame for finding it attractive. In the second scene, he is referring to the feminist book The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. It proves that he is familiar with Beauvoir’s work and is aware of her arguments. (Not that it’s entirely surprising that a philosophy professor would have read The Second Sex, but still). Let me share a quote from The Second Sex that does not appear in the movie, but which is in the book - that he clearly read: 

(Beauvoir, 1949/2011, p. 196)

He knows about Beauvoir's point about men confusing their perspective with absolute truth, he acknowledges women as "relative beings" in a male-shaped world, and then he IMMEDIATELY reasserts his authority anyway (You mean “slept with”). Correcting her language - as if he could claim superior access to reality and how to frame/conceptualize it. He does the same in the third scene (and other scenes where it’s just less easy to point out). Instead of physically penetrating her and “rearranging her guts”, he’s attempting to penetrate her mind and rearrange the way she sees and understands the world (and her own subjective feelings). By adding “as Simone de Beauvoir points out, and quite correctly, …” he also positions himself as a judge of whether Beauvoir’s points are correct or not. He doesn’t frame it as if he’s stating his personal opinion, but as if his judgement necessarily, and naturally, reflects the truth. It would be less hot if he was simply ignorant and wasn’t familiar with feminist philosophy. The fact that he has progressive insight and still chooses to go with the traditional masculine sense of entitlement makes me weak (and fuck, I wish it wouldn’t). It makes the violation seem so deliberate. 

There also seems to be a defilement of her innocent (relative to his) language and understanding of what the words reference. He overrides her soft, polite and slightly more romantic choice of words, “experience with women”, with the more crude and direct “slept with.” - which also reduces “experience with women” to something inherently sexual. (I’m aware she was referring to something sexual herself, but the reduction is still there) Discovering the irony in this scene stimulates my pattern-seeking, intellectual mind, but watching him embody one of those masculine patterns Beauvoir warned against - in the exact work he is referencing - does stimulate my erotic mind. Abe might have corrected that with a crude “You mean your 'pussy'. It stimulates your pussy.” And that would both have pissed me off and turned me on. 

An additional note on this scene, am I absolutely crazy or does his “Mhmm” sound a little too satisfied and approving right after she agrees to her own secondary status in a male-dominated world? Especially accompanied by that smirk on his face. I’m less confident about my interpretation of that. Something about it provokes me in more ways than one, though. 

Scene 4

Besides being obsessed with the way he firmly grabs her and forces her to sit and listen to him, I also find his paternalistic, condescending tone hot. Yes, he’s praising her intelligence, but something about his tone and body language in this scene gives me the vibe that he’s this close to patting her on the head, calling her a good girl, and giving her a gold star for her little detective work. That gesture with his finger (that parents and teachers often do in front of children to assert their authority and emphasize their point) is probably part of the reason I interpret it that way. His praise and the “Come here.” combined with him physically restraining her also makes me think of a patient dad protecting her from her own misguided tantrum - for her own good, of course. (According to him, anyway.) He has a strong “I know better than you, so let me help you understand, clever girl.”-energy in this scene. 

Scene 5 (or technically scene 4b)

“I don’t have the intellect to refute these arguments. I can’t argue with you. [...] I feel that this is no good.” The way she admits intellectual inferiority to him and then proceeds to appeal to him based on her feelings really highlights that classic gender stereotype of “Men think, women feel.” that positions men as rational, logical beings and women as emotional, intuitive beings in comparison. 

Throughout the movie, Jill also represents more of a deontological stance on ethics, because she believes an action is either right or wrong in a more absolute moral sense. Abe even degrades this way of thinking a little bit (early in the movie) when he says “[even the smallest lie] would destroy his [Kant’s] precious categorical imperative” and indirectly refers to the rigidity of it as “philosophical bullshit” not flexible enough for the real world. Abe’s stance on ethics seems more in line with consequentialism because he attempts to make a calculation of how his actions would affect the net good in the world and uses the predicted outcome as a guideline for whether or not an action is morally permissible. The reason I bring this up is because I remember being told in Ethics class that men are more likely to align with consequentialism and women are more likely to align with deontology. I looked it up today to see if that actually holds up and it seems that way (Friesdorf et al., 2015; Armstrong et al., 2018;  Pilcher et al., 2024). So there’s yet another gender difference present between them. The contrast is hot to me. 

Overall, the meta-irony of a woman like me, who has read The Second Sex, finding his behavior arousing is not lost on me. He is aware of the critique and chooses to lean into the masculine role anyway. I am aware of it, too, yet I also choose to lean into my second sexness by romanticizing it and craving male authority. A smart man also knows I’m aware of this. Which only adds to the humiliation… Being "managed" by a man who knows I’m smart enough to see what he’s doing. Yet I surrender to it anyway.  I’m in a "It’s complicated" relationship with feminism. I technically am a feminist. I believe women should be just as free to pursue the life of their dreams as men are. Which also means that if my dreams involve finding forbidden pleasure in gender difference stereotypes and Abe’s patronizing, condescending tone here…. then I should be free to do so. I’m a free woman. I do what I want. But Simone de Beauvoir even predicted that I’d say and think something along the lines of that, too:

(Beauvoir, 1949/2011, p. 774)

(Beauvoir, 1949/2011, p. 776)

(Beauvoir, 1949/2011, p. 472) I'll end this ramble by posting one last quote from The Second Sex. A quote that I believe is meant as criticism, but that I just can't help but find beautiful and extremely romantic. Which is probably very problematic of me:

(Beauvoir, 1949/2011, p. 784)