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Breillat's Abuse Of Weakness

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The quote acts to show why Marie found it justifiable to be abused and raped by men in society. She gave herself to her boyfriend Paul, who rejected her sexual advances yet, although she was “Paul’s girl” she felt somewhat unwanted or unneeded. She failed to meet or satisfy Paul’s needs (Beauvoir). Marie however, was willing to participate in self-harmful experiences because she is a woman, dependent on men in society. Marie sees herself as all “men’s girl” and thus justifies to herself that she can continue to engage in harmful and degrading sexual experiences to satisfy their needs. This is a societal expectation in many ways. Society expects that Marie or women in general exist to serve men as many of the writers that we have explored thus…show more content…
In Abuse of Weakness, the main character, Maud, suffers from the aftermath of a cerebral hemorrhage, which caused a debilitating stroke. Once she has recovered, she quickly gets back into making films and decides to cast a not so moral man named Vilko. Vilko constantly asks Maud for loans, of which she continually provides him with and likely is never paid back for (Abuse of Weakness). As Beauvoir describes, “one of the curses weighing on the passionate woman: her generosity is immediately converted into demands” (Beauvoir 695). Thus, once Maud agrees to loan Vilko money it becomes an expectation that she will continually do so. This film, is very interesting as many of the feminist writers that we have encountered thus far like Beauvoir have suggested, women are viewed as weak, lesser citizens in society. In society, weakness often coincides with abuse. Morally-lacking individuals often prey on the weak because they find it easy to extort them for what they want. Thus, women are inherently extorted because they are forever weak in society. They are used as slaves of domesticity, tasked with completing all of the duties in the household for no pay. In the bedroom, women are abused and lack control of their sexual endeavors in many ways. Women are…show more content…
As MacKinnon states, “so long as sexual inequality remains unequal and sexual, attempts to value sexuality as women’s, possessive as if women possess it, will remain part of limiting women to it, to what women are now defined as being” (MacKinnon). Men must relinquish some of their control. Women must expand their roles in society outside of motherhood and being sexual objects. Unfortunately, even when a woman is successful, unfortunate aspects like a stroke can cause a woman to be reliant on men and lead him to take advantage of them (women) such as what happened with Maud. Furthermore, sadly even when a woman is actively and willingly being promiscuous, she is still subject to male’s dominance and superiority over her as what happened to Marie. Society is in a continuous state of oppression over women because not only men, but also women make justifications that which enables the injustices to persist. Overcoming women’s submissions, subjectivity, and lack of control is easier said than done. Although society has made major gains over the past few decades on women’s rights, unfortunately we are still likely decades, perhaps centuries away from being equal regarding gender and biological
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